Breathing Space
by ohcyfan
Summary: This story fills in the missing moments in "Elevator Love Letter" and continues Owen's journey toward healing his PTSD.
1. Chapter 1

_**Disclaimer: I do not own these characters or anything to do with Grey's Anatomy. They are the property of Shonda Rhimes and ABC. This story is for entertainment purposes only.**_

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_It was my idea in the first place. I should be relieved._ Owen closed the door to the on-call room softly as he made his exit, leaving Cristina still huddled under the covers. Outwardly composed, he was reeling inside, and he found himself in front of his locker without remembering how he got there. He was too tired to change out of his scrubs and decided to just wear them home. As he went through the motions of gathering his belongings, he tried to make sense of the incomprehensible.

Amazing how just a few minutes - a car accident, an ambush... a fucking strangling - could utterly change your life. His whole world had shifted in much the same way it had after the ambush, now tilting crazily on an axis he had mistakenly thought was stabilizing over the last few weeks, when in reality, he had slept through one of the most pivotal events of his entire life. _Unfair. Hideously unfair._ He slammed his hand into the locker and leaned his head on it in agony. _If I was going to fuck up the most important relationship I've ever been in, _he raged inwardly,_ the least I could ask for was that I be awake to do it._

The last 48 hours had been profoundly disorienting. The winds had shifted one too many times, and while he was generally a flexible guy, one who rolled with whatever came his way, somehow things had gotten completely out of hand. The craziness probably began with Bailey bullying him into going after Derek, which upset the natural hierarchy of his workplace and sent him into a bit of a tailspin as he got sucked into the black hole Derek had created for himself out in the woods. He had ended up missing all but the very end of Cristina's first solo surgery - an event he had planned on observing start to finish and then celebrating with her. If that wasn't enough, there was the news that Izzy was probably terminally ill, and that Cristina had been the sole repository for this most disturbing of all secrets for days. No wonder she had seemed distant. He had been worried it had something to do with him at the time. In a desire to support her and lighten her mood, he had accepted Cristina's invitation to hang out and watch videos, glad that the day's events hadn't totally ruined his chance for spending time with her. Sitting on her bed, eating popcorn, he had discovered yet another delightful aspect to her quirkiness. _Who in the hell watches cardiac surgeries to unwind after work? _He had been amused and intrigued at the same time, and had drifted off in Cristina's bed imagining spending many such evenings with her, enjoying them because she enjoyed them, sharing his own special interests with her at some point, and dealing with her snide comments with a half smile and an overwhelming urge to kiss her. As he drew the blanket over her and turned out the light, he had been thinking about those 40 years he wanted, and had already reconsidered that number as being too small. 50 years, or 60 - that was more like it.

Falling asleep next to her had seemed perfectly right at the time. He never suspected that this one small decision would prove to be such a devastating mistake.

He had awakened to find himself in the middle of a nightmare worse than any he'd ever experienced - worse because it was not a figment of his tortured mind, but cold, stark reality. Cristina was gasping and choking, and his hands were around her neck. He had let go instantly of course, but she had continued to cough and sob, looking at him as if he were some deranged stranger who had broken into her apartment in the middle of the night. She had locked herself in her bathroom and left Owen to stew in her living room under Callie's grim, disbelieving glare. He had heard every word of the frantic phone call to Meredith, felt the shame of having done something terribly wrong, and childhood fears - borne of guilt-inducing sermons at church - had surfaced as he sat there staring at his wretched hands. He remembered fidgeting in those cold, hard pews as a child, hearing the pastor drone on about sin and sinners, his 8-year-old mind afraid that he would one day be accused of a crime he didn't commit, then judged by a jury made up of people who couldn't possibly understand him. Never did he imagine that he was destined for far worse that that, that someday his own body would betray him while he slept and he would actually commit the crime, but have no knowledge or memory of it. There was no jury here, but his self-judgment was far worse than anything 12 random people could inflict.

He had apologized to Cristina from the very depths of his mortification and shame, and expected harsh words, fear, censure - anything but the open arms that had greeted him. He did not deserve her. How could she understand so well when he couldn't make any sense of it? How could she be so strong when he felt so weak inside? And what about that niggling particle of doubt that ate at him, convincing him that she was making a terrible mistake to forgive him when he could not forgive himself? He had stumbled out of her apartment and somehow made it home, but if he had had a gun handy in his nightstand he probably would not have lived to see the sunrise. Good thing he'd never had the urge to keep a weapon around.

Things just got worse when, at work, he ran into the brick wall created by her justifiably protective friends - doctors he had considered colleagues and students who suddenly looked at him with suspicion and dread. He couldn't blame them. He would have done much worse to anyone who dared hurt Cristina, so he was taken aback but not really surprised by their reaction. The encounter with Meredith and Callie had reinforced his belief that he had to step back from her, and at the vent, he had pled the case for the demise if their relationship, only to be told yet again that Cristina could make her own decisions. He had known with even more conviction than before that she was wrong about this, but had so wanted to believe in the fantasy that he'd clung to the lifeline she offered even as he saw with fierce clarity that if he allowed her to have her way, he would inevitably pull her down with him. Then, when he'd moved in to kiss her, she'd held him back, and he'd seen that the night's events were not so easily shrugged off as she tried to make it sound. And he saw that she saw it too. He knew then that the seed had finally been planted in her, and that it was only a matter of time before she, too, understood the inevitable.

_How had they ended up in bed together, after all that?_ He had known for weeks that the moment was coming, and in the natural course of their relationship it was likely to happen soon. He had already come up with several scenarios, usually during lulls in the long nights on call when he was too wired to sleep but too tired to do anything else. He had a creative mind, and some of the seductions he'd imagined were pretty far out of the box. But never in a million years would he have imagined a bizarro world such as the one he now inhabited, a world where he would strangle her and sleep with her within the same 24 hours.

When he had asked if he could hold her, his intention had been just that. But the effect of her hands on him, the intoxicating scent of her shampoo, and their physical closeness had been too hard to resist. There was so much he wanted to say to her, and this seemed the best way to get it across. This encounter had not been about the sexual thrill, though that had been all he could have asked for. It had been about cherishing her, reassuring her and himself that she had nothing to fear from him, kissing away the damage he had done. He desperately wanted to show her that his hands were meant for gentleness, not violence. It had been his way of conveying all of the things he had no words for after an incident that was so horrifying it defied description. Somewhere in the tangled skein of sensations, of emotions, of the delight of finally being inside her, he had let down the wall he'd been carefully building and hoped against hope that the separation he was anticipating would somehow not come to pass. This fervent wish paradoxically coexisted with his absolute certainty that he was giving her something to remember him by in the lonely moments that were to come.

He had allowed himself to relax in the aftermath of their lovemaking, and that's probably why, when it finally came, the arrow pierced his heart to the extent that it did. For a few moments, the world had fallen away, and the two of them existed in a bubble where the most important things were the love he felt for her and the satisfied buzz of his body after a great orgasm. And then she had spoken, and the bubble had burst in a shower of pointed shards. The despair in her voice reached in with a cold hand and tore his heart out. "I'm lying here in your arms, and I'm afraid to go to sleep." _Of course she was. So was he._ Even inside that satisfied bubble they had occupied, he had been fighting the urge to drift off, his fear matching hers and even exceeding it. She would have been an idiot to feel otherwise. It all boiled down to one painfully obvious question: How could he expect her to trust him when he didn't trust himself?

He couldn't expect that. He didn't. After fighting the impulse to disconnect from everyone, working hard to bridge that gap with the one person he felt he could relate to, he was more utterly alone in his struggle for sanity than he had been before it all began. Because now he knew. He knew without a doubt that they were meant for each other, that their connection wasn't just some chance fling, that this woman was the one he'd been waiting for all his life. He had finally tasted the sweetness of a physical connection with her, only to lose it in virtually the same breath. And now he felt like he was the one who was choking.

He made his way across the hospital parking lot to his truck. The night was unnaturally still, almost as if it, too, had lost the ability to breathe.

_There has to be something I can do about this_, he pondered as he unlocked the door and got behind the wheel. Helplessness in the face of an obstacle did not sit well with him.

_Shepherd._ Owen took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Derek had offered to help, and Owen had been so ashamed of himself, so defensive about what he had done, that he'd pissed on the offer and thrown it in his face along with an atrocious below-the-belt punch. He didn't know Derek well enough to have a sense about whether or not he held a grudge, but it was worth finding out. Anything was better than staring into the bottomless pit that was his future without Cristina.

Owen stepped out of the cab of his truck and headed back into the hospital. He had seen Shepherd in the hall as he was leaving. Maybe he could still catch him.


	2. Chapter 2

Cristina lay in bed for a long time after Owen's departure, but the tears wouldn't come. She second-guessed herself repeatedly, to no avail. The answer was always the same. _I can't be with someone who might kill me in his sleep._ It seemed an obvious conclusion, so why was she fighting it so hard?

_Because he was incredible. Because the lovemaking had been the sweetest she'd ever experienced. Because she was in love with him, even if she hadn't yet said the words. Because it was not his fault. Because he was the best man she'd ever met - ever. Because she felt his pain as if it were her own. Because his was the only face she wanted to see when she woke up in the morning, 40 years from now. Because when she wasn't thinking about medicine, she was thinking about him. Because she knew with certainty that he was the one, the keeper._

He had reacted with confusion initially, but Cristina attributed that more to his drowsy, relaxed state after sex than to any genuine shock over her statement. After all, she was only agreeing with a conclusion he had reached himself earlier in the day. She felt badly for giving him false hope after that, although she couldn't find it in herself to regret their making love. Even while she was insisting that she would decide what she could handle, a small voice inside had been telling her that she was being unrealistic, that her friends were right, that one could not continue to sleep with a man who had cut off her air supply and then not remembered any of it. _What if I hadn't woken up?_ he had asked. She had sloughed off the question at the time, but now she pondered it and gave it the weight it deserved. Her heart began pounding again and her palms grew damp as she relived the terrifying few moments when she had looked into Owen's eyes and seen, not that electric, intelligent blue, but simply nothing. He had looked like a zombie, a stranger with a vacancy sign for a face, as if he was not the man she had been weaving so intricately into her life for the past few months, but his evil, insane twin. She had never been more scared in her entire life. Not even the terrifying experience of holding her father's chest closed while he bled to death compared to being suffocated by someone you trusted. She had been this close to passing out when Callie intervened. She felt certain that she would be seeing that vacant stare again in her nightmares for some time to come.

He had taken it well. In fact, she was certain he had been expecting it. Once he understood the full extent of what she was saying, he had closed his eyes for a moment, and when he had opened them he'd pulled Cristina into his arms and whispered, "I'm sorry" into her ear. He had kissed the bruises on her neck and then sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and just sitting there for a few moments. Cristina had watched him without saying anything, resisting the impulse to pull him back down next to her and tell him it was all a lie, that she really could handle it, that she was fine. But she wasn't fine, and she realized belatedly that choking someone really was worse than batting an engagement ring into the woods. Intentions cease to matter much when there is the potential for fatal consequences. It was not a matter of forgiveness. There was nothing to forgive. She was absolutely sure there wasn't even a single ounce of mal-intent in what had happened. And the sad thing was, it made no difference. The outcome was the same. They could not continue like this.

Cristina pulled herself up and began to dress. Spending more time in this bed, with the impression left by Owen's head on the pillow next to her, wasn't doing her any good. Where was Mer? She needed her person right now. Cristina pulled out her cell phone and made the call.


	3. Chapter 3

Cristina left the front door unlocked and crawled into bed, and the tears finally came. She wept silently into her pillow, allowing herself to release the pent up emotions that had built up since the incident. By the time she heard Mer enter the apartment, she had cried out most of what she had inside, and she felt drained and numb.

Mer poked her head in the door.

"I'm engaged."

"I broke up with Owen."

Meredith moved to the bed and lay her head down next to Cristina's, and for a while she said nothing. She felt relieved. She had hoped for this, wanted to see her friend face reality and get herself out of danger, but she felt sad for her pain. If anyone deserved a break in the romance department, it was Cristina, and Mer had been genuinely happy when she had seen how Cristina lit up when Owen was around. Now, in her post-proposal glow, she did not begrudge Cristina her grief or her inability to celebrate this milestone in Mer's life. Some things just had to be dealt with in the moment. There would be time to celebrate later.

"You did the right thing, Cristina. You know you did."

"I know I did, but not for the reasons you think. You don't get it, Mer. You think he's a bad person for what happened."

"What am I supposed to think when I find out he's strangled my best friend? How would you feel if Derek did that to me?"

"He was asleep, Mer. He wasn't really there."

"Tell that to the Coroner, Cristina. He could have killed you! Have you looked at your neck? I know you really care for him, but this is crazy stuff... He's obviously unstable."

"He's not obviously **anything**. You don't know what happened to him, Mer. I don't know how he even gets up in the morning, much less comes to work and functions like he does."

Meredith stopped the words of denial that were about to come out of her mouth and took a breath. She needed to work on being a better listener. _ Let Cristina talk._ "Well, maybe you'd better explain it to me, then. Because I can't think of much of anything that justifies choking your girlfriend in her sleep."

"And I can't think of much of anything that justifies throwing your girlfriend's engagement ring in her face, but you don't hear me harping on that, do you? You don't hear me telling you to refuse the proposal."

Meredith signed and shrugged her shoulders. "It's different. He wasn't himself that night. He had just messed up and lost a patient he'd grown very attached to."

Cristina was getting incensed. She lifted herself up off the bed by her elbow and looked down at Meredith. "And how do you think that compares to being the only survivor of an ambush, losing 19 of your close friends in a matter of minutes, watching them all die, and being helpless to do anything about it? How do you think a man like Owen might react to something like **that**? Do you think it might **justify** being just a little bit messed up afterward?"

Meredith was quiet for a few moments. She was glad she'd stopped to listen. "I'm sorry. I had no idea. I never really thought too much about what he did over there."

"Well, **that's** what he did. He saved a lot of lives...He's seen stuff that makes watching a serial killer's execution look like.... like buying a sandwich. Just think about what that did to you when you saw that, and how you felt afterward." Her intense gaze had Meredith looking away out of discomfort. "He's a real hero, Mer. He would have gone back over there again if they hadn't discharged him."

Cristina paused. This felt like a tirade, but damn, she was pissed. It was bad enough that she had to break up with him, but to hear people judge him without knowing the facts was just unbearable. "When I met him in the ER that first time he was so idealistic, so ready to sacrifice for his country. When he came back after his last tour, he was a wreck. He told me what happened to him, to his unit, and I honestly couldn't understand how he got through the day, much less took over as head of a department..." She had thought she was out of tears, but a few more managed to make an appearance. "He's the most incredible man I've ever known, and it just kills me that we can't be together. I still can't get my mind around it."

"You're in love with him." It sounded almost like an accusation when Meredith said it. "You're in love with Owen Hunt."

Cristina didn't deny it. She said nothing, but her eyes gave her away.

Meredith was silent while she digested all of this new information. Owen's war experiences, Cristina's feelings for him... this definitely shed a different light on things. "Well, then, isn't there anything that can be done? I mean, there's treatment for this kind of thing, isn't there?"

"There is." Cristina took a breath and tried to settle herself. She put her head back on the pillow and stared at the ceiling. The confrontational aspect of this conversation was over, and she was beginning to feel more centered. "I researched it a while back and I asked him to get some help. He wasn't ready, and I didn't push... He seems to think that what happened to him was nothing compared to what happened to a lot of other guys - you know, physical injuries. There's this stigma in the military around PTSD, and these army types tend to just close themselves off and deny they have a problem..."

"Well, he can't deny he has a problem now, can he? I mean, he's got to see he can't go on this way."

"I'm hoping the same thing. Maybe this whole incident won't be in vain if it gets him to look for help. That would at least give me something...."

Meredith smiled. "You think I should give him Dr. Wyatt's card?"

Cristina snorted. "Her? You hated her. And I told her she was a terrible shrink."

"But she wasn't," Mer corrected. "I just wasn't ready to hear what she had to say, at least not at first. But she was right about most everything in the end." Meredith smiled again and shook her head. "She's a lot tougher than she looks. She will SO kick his ass!"

"That sounds like a plan, then...." Cristina smiled back, and wiped the last tear from her face. "Now, show me that ring."


	4. Chapter 4

Derek was finishing up some paperwork in his office when he heard a light knock on the doorframe. He looked up to see Owen standing there, looking very uncomfortable.

"Is there something I can do for you, Dr. Hunt?" His tone was formal, not inviting but not judging, either.

"Um... yeah. I was wondering if that offer of assistance from this morning was still...uh... still open..."

"You mean the MRI? The PTSD stuff?"

His voice was hushed. "Yeah, I mean that..."

Derek smiled. He could only imagine how hard it must be for Hunt to come back and ask for his help after what he had said. Now was not the time to get petty. "Of course. Do you want to go right now? I'm just finishing up here."

"Yeah... uh... the sooner the better."

"Ok," Derek nodded. He studied Owen for a moment. "Did something else happen? I mean, you weren't too keen on this course of action this morning."

Owen shifted his weight and looked at his hands for a second before answering. "Cristina broke up with me - and she was right to do it."

"Ah." Derek nodded. "In that case, how about I buy you a beer when we're done? I need to get a history anyhow, and I'd rather not stick around here any more than I need to today."

"Ok." Owen's voice was ragged. He was still uncomfortable with the way he had spoken to Derek earlier, but the apology stuck in his throat. It would be ok, though. Shepherd's reaction was calming him down. He knew the right words would find their way out in a few minutes.

----

"So tell me exactly what you remember from that night." Derek had brought a chart along and they were sitting in a booth at Joe's with a couple of beers between them.

"We were watching a video and Cristina fell asleep. I figured I'd just crash there and the last thing I remember is watching the ceiling fan go around. The next thing I knew I was on top of Cristina, choking her, and Callie was screaming at me. I let go as soon as I realized what I was doing... " Owen's voice cracked as he recounted the horror of that moment,"I have no memory of how I got into that position, or of choking her... It was like I blacked out or something."

Derek paused while he scribbled some notes. "Do you remember having a dream, or a nightmare?"

"No... nothing. I do get them... nightmares, I mean... but nothing that I can recall from that night. I think I must have been having one, but I can't remember anything..."

"And when you were in Iraq, did you ever sustain a head injury?"

"No."

"Do you get flashbacks while you're awake?"

"No... I mean, I've frozen a few times, like up on the helipad yesterday, but nothing I'd call an actual flashback."

"That's probably a form of flashback. You just don't realize it." Owen nodded but didn't say anything. "Have you ever walked in your sleep? Or done anything else unusual in your sleep, like waking up in a different place than you went to bed, but not remembering how you got there? Or finding food wrappers near the bed but not remembering eating the food?"

"Not that I know of. I mean, stuff could have happened, I suppose,but I'd have no way of knowing... I live alone."

"And Cristina hasn't reported...?"

"Uh... we haven't been in situations where she could see something like that, until the other night, so no..." Owen cleared his throat. "Did you get a chance to look at the MRI before we left?"

"Just a quick glance... enough to know you don't have a brain tumor, which was something I did need to rule out. And I saw no evidence of prior head injury, either. The kinds of changes that are being seen in PTSD are a little more subtle, and quite honestly, the jury is still out on whether or not those findings are valid. No one really knows if the changes in the hippocampus that we're seeing are significant or not. They could be the result of things that happened in childhood, when the brain was still developing. We're hampered by the lack of a prior MRI on our subjects, one taken before the trauma happened, that would give us something to compare with."

Owen nodded. "So what next?"

"Come in and see me tomorrow and I'll go over the scan with you in more detail. And I'd like you to go do a sleep study. We have an excellent sleep clinic right here, or you could go to the VA and take part in their research study if you want." Owen shook his head no to the VA suggestion, and Derek continued. "What you're describing to me sounds like a sleep disorder, which is very common in PTSD. The good news is there are several medications that might work for you. They're going to need to pin down the actual sleep problem first, though." Owen nodded and took a swig of his beer. This was beginning to sound somewhat hopeful - certainly better than the lifetime of misery he had consigned himself to only hours ago.

Derek paused for a moment. "From what you're telling me, it sounds pretty textbook. In normal sleep, the body is paralyzed during the REM cycles and that's what stops people from acting out what happens in their dreams. But there's a sleep disorder where that paralytic response is short-circuited and people will actually thrash around, or get up and do things in their sleep... I had a patient come in once with a severe head injury because her husband dreamed he was boxing and punched her several times in the head before she could wake him up.... He was a big strong guy and he fractured her skull. This stuff happens, Owen. You're not the only one."

"I wish that made me feel better, but it doesn't."

"Don't be too hard on yourself. Maybe Cristina will come around when she understands it better."

Owen grimaced. "I don't think understanding it is the problem with her... It's living with it. She said she was afraid to fall asleep with me there. That's a hard one to get around...Either way, though, I think her guard dogs will be even harder to convince." Derek looked at him inquisitively. "Your girlfriend and Callie ran interference today and wouldn't let me get within ten feet of her."

"Mmm...." Derek stopped midway through a swig of beer to correct him, "She's not my girlfriend anymore."

Owen looked puzzled. "Don't tell me you broke up today too?"

"Just the opposite. We got engaged. She's my fiancee now." Derek smiled.

Owen placed his bottle carefully on the table and gave Derek a long look. "Then what the fuck are you doing sitting here with me? Isn't there someplace else you'd rather be tonight?"

"We were headed out but she got a distress call from Cristina. I didn't know what it was about, but I guess I do now. She's over there and said she'd call when she was done."

"You might be in for a long night. My guess is they'll be at it for a while."

"It's ok. I'm used to it. And if you two end up together, you'll get used to it, too."

"I hope I get that opportunity." Owen met Derek's gaze, and then looked away. The wound was still too fresh to pick at.

"I do too. As much as she's a pain in the ass to me sometimes, I have a lot of respect for Cristina."

Owen's eyes clouded over with grief for a moment, but he pulled himself together. "Anything else, Doctor?"

"Yeah. You need to see a shrink - right away. And don't give me any shit over this. Real men do benefit from therapy, and in my professional opinion you really need it. This is another place where medication might help, too. I can recommend someone if you need a referral."

"Oh, god... Ok... At this point I'll do whatever it takes."

"Then check out Dr. Wyatt. I'm a fan."

"What's so special about him?"

"First of all, it's a her... and secondly, she worked with Meredith a while back and Mer was an incredibly tough nut to crack. I think without her help, I wouldn't be engaged today."

"That's quite an endorsement." Owen fidgeted in his seat. Every fiber of his being rebelled against the idea of sitting in a shrink's office talking about his problems. "Ok. I'll look into it. Is she one of ours?"

"Yeah. I think you'll like her. She's a redhead too."

Owen gave him a wry smile, "That's too bad. I happen to be partial to petite Asian women with bad attitudes..."

Derek acknowledged the comment with a small smile of his own, and then his phone rang. He signaled for Owen to wait a second, " Ok, I'll be there in a couple of minutes.... Yeah... Bye..." He hung up. "That's my cue. I have to get going." He threw a few bucks on the table to cover the beers and put a hand on Owen's shoulder. "I'll talk to Meredith... try to get her to understand a bit better...It's bad enough to be dealing with all this, without having Thelma and Louise glaring at you when you go to work."

Owen chuckled softly at the image. "Ok. I won't try and stop you. I'm sure you know her best. Do you think I should talk to her myself?"

"It wouldn't hurt. I think the more she gets to know you, the better off you'll be..." He laughed softly, "Hell, she had so much compassion for that sack of shit they fried over at the prison that I can't imagine she'll stay mad at **you** for long."

He hesitated for a moment, as if unsure whether to continue, and finally added, "I've seen the way you and Cristina look at each other, Hunt. I'm holding out hope this can be fixed - maybe not right away, but if you really make an effort to get the help you need, you'll be surprised how quickly you can improve. And between you and me, I don't think Cristina is going anywhere..."

"I hope you're right," Owen nodded. "Hey, thanks again. Really. It feels better to have a plan... I'm... I'm sorry I was such a dick about it when you suggested I get help..."

"No worries," Derek replied. "I've done the reading. I know about the stigma around this stuff in the military. That's a hard thing to get around... Come see me tomorrow and I'll introduce you to our sleep guy."

He nodded, and Derek turned and walked out. Owen leaned back against the wall of the booth and took a few deep breaths. The idea of going back to his empty apartment held little appeal, and the on-call room at the hospital had too many memories for him tonight. His fingers itched to pull out his phone and call Cristina, but he resisted the impulse. He headed out the door and back to his truck, unable to stifle the urge to check out her window. The light was on. How bad would it be if he went over there and just told her about his MRI, about his plans to get help?

_No_, he decided. _Not tonight._ Things were too raw, and it felt too risky. They were both exhausted and upset. He had potentially good news, but he was too trashed to deliver it.

Besides, he had a long road ahead. There was plenty of time.


	5. Chapter 5

Meredith ran into Callie on the landing as she exited the apartment, and closed the door softly behind her so that they could speak in private.

"How is she?" Callie whispered.

"As well as can be expected, after something like that, I think..." Meredith trailed off. "They broke up." Callie let out a breath and nodded, and Meredith continued, "She seems pretty depressed to me."

"Who wouldn't be? This whole thing is just so bizarre. I mean, I really liked him… and he never seemed... I still don't know what to make of it..."

"It's more complicated than you think," Meredith offered, "I'm pretty sure she's in love with him... and I have a feeling she slept with him for the first time either right before or right after it happened."

Callie gave her a quizzical look. "How do you figure that?"

"I don't know for sure, but we were talking two days ago...before any of this... and I kidded her about it, and she told me they hadn't slept together yet. But tonight... I don't know… I just have a feeling it's not true anymore... Do you think she slept with him and then he strangled her?" Meredith's voice grew even more hushed, "I mean, that would be seriously deranged."

"I don't think so," Callie replied. "I'm the one who woke him up, and they weren't **in** the bed, they were on top of it... And they were both fully clothed, too. I can't imagine they would have done the deed, then gotten dressed and slept on top of the covers... I think if anything happened, it must have been after that..."

"Which just sounds so totally messed up on Cristina's part, doesn't it? I mean, who sleeps with someone after something like that?"

"We don't know anything," Callie reminded her. "This is just you making stuff up right now."

"That's true... but there's more to this. She told me some things about Hunt that really... well... it got me thinking."

"Like what?"

Meredith's phone beeped, and she grimaced at Callie before taking it out to read the text. Derek was waiting for her downstairs.

"Sorry. I gotta go. Are you on tomorrow morning?"

"Yeah."

"Let's talk then, ok?"

"Ok, but now you've got me wondering, so let's make it early."

"Ok. How about lunch?"

"That works. See you tomorrow."

Meredith made her way down the stairs and out the door, and Callie took a deep breath and entered the apartment. She went directly to Cristina's room and saw her lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

"Hey... You ok? Is there anything I can get for you?"

"No," Cristina replied in a monotone, "I'm fine."

"Did you eat?"

"Uh... no, but I'm not hungry. I'm fine."

_I'm fine_. She had heard that phrase too many times from Cristina in the last 24 hours. Callie was concerned but didn't press.

"Oh," Cristina propped herself up on an elbow, "thanks for cleaning up in here. That was you, right?"

"Yeah, that was me." Callie had returned home briefly after her shift to change clothes before going out to dinner with Arizona, and had noticed that the wreckage from the previous night was still strewn all over the floor. It was bad enough that Cristina had to come back to the same room where it had all happened, but it would be even worse if she had to see the place looking like it had been the scene of an attack - which it had. She had cleared up the broken glass and other nightstand items, mopped up the spilled water, and had even made the bed despite the fact that Cristina rarely did so herself.

"Um… the iPod is ok, but I think you're going to need a new alarm clock..."

"What? Oh." Cristina hadn't noticed before, but the display on her new iHome was dead and the casing was cracked. "Are you sure it's plugged in?"

"Yeah. I tried it in a couple of sockets but I think it's a goner. Do you want me to wake you up tomorrow morning?"

"No. I'll just use my cell. But thanks anyhow."

"Ok, then. Goodnight."

"Goodnight."

An uneasy premonition dogged Callie's heels as she headed for her bedroom. _I doubt it. I doubt this is going to be a good night for anyone._


	6. Chapter 6

Cristina had thought she'd be able to sleep better without Owen there, but that didn't prove to be true. She lay on her back and stared at the ceiling, and images of their conversations, their shifts together, their lovemaking last night paraded themselves through her mind, interspersed with flashes from what she was now calling "The Incident." It was so hard to reconcile the Owen she had grown to love with the heartless machine who had dug his thumbs into her throat and gone for the kill. And that made sense. She knew intellectually that **her** Owen would never hurt her. The problem was, that other Owen was in there too, and it wasn't like they could just hire an exorcist and chant him out.

As her tired mind went around and around with it, she vacillated between hope and hopelessness, back and forth between despairing over the relationship and envisioning him whole, healed, and the two of them together - but always landing with a thud in the stark reality that for now, they were apart, and she had no idea if they'd ever be able to be together again. She tossed and turned for over an hour and finally fell into a fitful doze, only to drift into a nightmare where Owen was strangling her again, and this time he was wide awake, fully aware, and looking her straight in the eye. She was trying to scream at him, to get him to stop, but he had cut off all her air and she couldn't get the words out. She woke up in a cold sweat and sat bolt upright, her heart racing, only to have Callie burst into her room seconds later.

"Shit, Cristina, are you ok?" Callie looked panicked.

Cristina was breathing heavily and her hands were shaking. "Huh? Yeah... Why are you in here?"

"You were screaming your head off! I thought someone was murdering you… God, that scared me." She peered into the darkness, "Are you alone?"

"What? Yes. Of course. There's no one here. I must have had a nightmare… Sorry I woke you up." Callie cocked an eyebrow at her. "Really, I'm fine. Go back to sleep."

Callie shook her head. Cristina was so clearly **not** fine. "Want me to stay in here with you?"

Cristina looked at her like she was crazy. "No! I'm fine, really. Go back to bed."

"Ok, whatever you say… but, you know, it's ok if you need help. That wasn't a little nothing that happened the other night, and you don't have to be all strong and brave for everybody…I'm here for you if you need me."

"Thanks… I… I'll let you know if I need anything. Right now, I just want to go back to sleep." With a resigned nod, Callie left the room, leaving the door about a foot ajar, and Cristina flopped back on the bed. Her heart was still going a mile a minute, and with the amount of adrenaline that had flooded her system, she knew it wasn't likely she'd be falling back asleep any time soon. Her mind was on overdrive too, and rather than try to shut it down, she let it fly. The disturbing images returned, and she felt an almost macabre urge to pin them down and really remember the details of the nightmare. It had been a vivid replay of what had actually happened, only far worse because Owen hadn't been asleep this time. It had felt so real, and had resembled what everyone else had assumed it was at the time, and what she knew for sure it was not - a willful assault by a deranged man.

And then it hit her. _This is what Owen goes through. This is what it's like for him to relive Iraq in his nightmares. This is how it feels for him to startle awake like that, to panic, to have all that extra adrenaline flowing through his veins and not be able to do anything but wait it out. How does he do it? How does he function?_

She turned on her side and tried to get comfortable as her brain processed this new information._ I thought I understood before, but I really didn't. Not fully.  
_

And then it hit her again._ Oh, this is actually kind of ironic. Because of what **he** did to me, I **really** get it now.  
_

_Shit_, she let out a bitter laugh, _am I NEXT? Is it fucking contagious or something? Am I going to wake up screaming every night now? _She knew there was nothing funny about it, but the laughter continued to bubble up nonetheless, accompanied by sporadic sobs as she tapped into the well of sorrow she had been carrying since the moment she realized that she could not allow herself to fall asleep in his presence. The pendulum of her emotions had swung from joy at their intense physical and emotional connection to abject sorrow and fear, all in a heartbeat. It was too massive a load to process all at once, and now she let the enormity of her delayed reaction flow out in a rush. Happiness, sadness, anger and fear all coexisted and jockeyed for position as she hugged Owen's pillow, laughing and crying at the same time. She was bordering on hysteria and she knew it.

_Breathe, Cristina, _she admonished herself._ Stop it. Enough. You're ok. You're fine. _ She took a few deep breaths and let them out slowly, mimicking the relaxation exercises they encouraged patients to do when they got nervous before surgery. It did help to slow her heart rate down, and the sobbing laughter subsided, but she was still far from relaxed enough to fall asleep. After a few more minutes she gave up, dug out one of her cardiac surgery DVDs, and popped it into the machine. It was going to be a long night. Might as well enjoy it.

-----------------


	7. Chapter 7

Owen and Callie arrived at the hospital entrance simultaneously the next morning, an awkward circumstance but one that Owen took advantage of nonetheless. "Um, Dr. Torres… Callie… can I have a word with you?"

She looked at him uncertainly, but finally shrugged, "Sure."

"Let's go somewhere relatively private if you don't mind…" He ushered her toward one of the on-call rooms and peeked inside. "This'll do." Callie followed him in, a little apprehensive but not truly scared. Even after what had happened, she didn't think he was an inherently dangerous man.

"Have a seat," he gestured to one of the beds, and he sat down on the one opposite. "How is she?"

Callie thought about how much to reveal, and decided to say as little as possible. "Ok. She's ok."

Owen nodded. He had a feeling there was more to the story, but he could tell she wasn't going to say anything else right now. He ran his hands over his face, as if unsure how to begin, but finally the words started tumbling out. "I wanted to apologize to you… for what you saw… for what you had to get in the middle of… and also to thank you for coming in like that. I...we both... owe you a lot. I think if you'd been a little bit later, Cristina and I would both be dead right now…" Callie looked at him quizzically, and he continued, "… because I would have killed myself if I'd killed Cristina… I… I felt like doing it just for hurting her."

Callie eyes widened but she said nothing, and Owen continued.

"I hope you believe me when I say that I'd never hurt her… ever…" He paused and took a breath, "I was asleep. I can't remember any of it. I… I realize now I have a problem with… god, I can barely even say the words… PTSD. It's PTSD… And I'm getting help for it now, after what happened. I already started the process last night."

She could tell he was sincere, and her previous impression of him began to square with the events as she gained clarity. Callie continued to look at him, considering. He fidgeted and then continued. "I… I don't know what else to say. I don't really expect you to forgive me, because I can't even forgive myself. I just wanted you to hear me out."

There was silence for a moment, and then Callie finally spoke. "Thanks for telling me. It helps. And I like you Owen, I really do. I feel badly for what you're going through… so I hope you understand when I tell you that for me, right now, this is not about you. It's about her. And she's actually not ok. She's not ok at all. In fact, she woke up screaming her head off last night…"

Owen groaned and covered his face with his hands at this information. _Oh, god. Now she's having nightmares. I did this to her. I did this._

Undaunted, Callie pressed on. It was important that he get the full picture, so that they could be on the same page about what needed to be done. "It was so bad, I thought she was being murdered in the next room… It almost gave me a heart attack… and when I ran in to check, she was sitting in bed, shaking like a leaf, and insisting she was fine. I think she was really traumatized by this whole thing, even though she won't admit it, and I hope you'll wait until you're much better before trying to be with her again, because she's damaged now too, Owen. And you did this, even if you didn't mean to."

He looked up and nodded at her, his eyes red with emotion. "I know. I wish I could take it back. I wish I'd gotten help before this happened…"

"Yeah, me too… but there's nothing you can do about that now. And it sounds like you're finally doing what you need to do, which is good… Does she know? About you getting help, I mean?"

"Not yet. I was going to tell her today. But now… I'm not sure if I should just stay away from her after what you just told me. I don't want to make things worse."

Callie thought about it for a minute. "Before we had this talk, I would have said yes, but now I don't think so. I think she'd want to know. It might help her, if she knew you were on the right path."

"Ok," he nodded, "Ok. I think she's on my service today anyhow, so we're likely to run into each other. I'll see how she is, play it by ear."

"Um…" Callie rose, "I have to go. We're both late."

"Just one more thing..." Owen followed her lead and got up too, "I just need a second. I feel awkward asking this, but... how many people know about what happened? Is it all over the hospital? Because I don't know if I can continue to work here if it is..."

Callie thought for a minute. "Well, unless you've told anyone, the only ones who know about it are you, me, Meredith... and Cristina of course. I don't think any of us are looking to spread this around, if that's what you're asking."

"And Derek," Owen added. "Derek knows. I went to him... and yes, that's what I was asking. Are you willing to try and keep this from hitting the hospital grapevine? I think I can handle it if it doesn't go any further." Owen had the distinct impression that he'd just asked the cat to guard the cream, but he had to start somewhere.

"Of course. I won't say anything, and I'll tell Mer to do the same. Just focus on what you have to do, and don't worry about it, ok?"

Owen went to open the door for her. "Thank you."

Callie gave him a small smile of acknowledgment and walked out.

-------

After she left, Owen closed the door and locked it, needing a moment to himself before he faced his workday. He was nearly overwhelmed with sadness and frustration over what he had just learned. _Cristina was having nightmares. _He knew all too well what that looked like, and all he could think of was that he wanted to be there when they happened, hold her in his arms, kiss her awake, and make it all better. And that was probably the last thing he could do for her right now. He shook his head in amazement. They were so much alike. He knew in his gut that even though she was hurting, she would try to tough it out, and looking at this situation from the outside he finally understood how it must feel to watch someone refuse help when they really needed it. Cristina had asked him to go see someone a couple of months ago. If only he had, this might all have been avoided, but he had been too invested in the military mindset to admit he had a problem. When he looked at himself from this perspective, all he saw was arrogance. He could try to excuse it by calling it something else, but in the end he had fucked things up because he was too proud to ask for help. That was not going to happen to her. The least he could do was learn from his own experience and do everything in his power to make sure she got what she needed.

It was going to be a big day. He had an appointment at the sleep clinic over his lunch hour, and Dr. Wyatt's card was in his pocket. He would have that appointment scheduled too, before the day was out. Funny how, after resisting it for so long, he was impatient to get started.


	8. Chapter 8

_She was a professional. He had to give her that. _

No surprises there. Owen imagined that most women who had nearly been strangled to death would take a sick day or two and lick their wounds, maybe even put in for a full-blown vacation. Cristina had simply thrown on a turtleneck and come to work, and were it not for the odd fashion statement under her scrub top, he doubted anyone would have noticed a thing. Today, with a breakup and a bad nightmare added to the load, was no different. Cristina showed up, not just physically, but in every capacity. It was what she did. He admired and related to it, because it was what he did too, what he had always done. Trauma aside, personal bullshit aside, Owen Hunt showed up for work.

Actually laying eyes on her again was like a punch to his gut, but he took his cue from her and hid it well. She was indeed on his service today, a scheduling decision he had made last week, and he considered it a good sign that she had not asked to be transferred. It indicated to him that perhaps not all was lost, that avoiding him would not be one of the tactics in her playbook. Even if they could not be together, having her around gave him hope. In his more optimistic moments, he told himself that they would work together and she would get used to him again. She would lose her fear. He would get better and he would win her back.

The alternative was too painful to contemplate, and while there was a certain appeal to self-flagellation in the aftermath of what he had done to her, he was trying hard not to go there if he could help it. Callie's account of the events of last night had set him back in this area, but he was struggling to keep himself out of the darkness as much as possible. There would be time enough to delve into that aspect when he began his sessions with the shrink.

It would have been a lot easier to hold to that decision if the rape victim had not come in towards the end of the day. Charlotte Engels, 33, had been brutalized, her face beaten and swollen until she was virtually unrecognizable. Bruises blossomed all over her body, and most particularly around her neck. He would have understood completely if Cristina had recused herself from this one, as he wished he could as well, but she had made sure the police were on their way, then proceeded to do the exam with him. She was cool and professional, but he could see the compassion in her eyes for the victim and knew this case was more than routine for her today.

Owen didn't handle it quite as well, somehow managing to power through the surge of bile in his throat and the shakiness he felt as they uncovered all of the atrocities this woman had been subjected to. It was one of the worst cases he had seen in a while, but Charlotte was remarkably lucid and was able to give a detailed account of the event. When she got to the part about how the assailant had repeatedly choked her almost to unconsciousness, he thought he was going to lose every meal he'd ever eaten. A sharp pang of guilt and shame rose to the surface as he gently palpated her neck to assess if there was any obvious damage, checking with her first to make sure she would not be traumatized by having another strange man touch her. His eyes met Cristina's as his fingers explored with the lightest possible touch, and he saw that, far from judging him or being disgusted, she was checking to see if he was ok.

Tears began to sting the back of his eyes and he had to look away. It was too much. The love he felt for her in that moment threatened to overwhelm him and he cleared his throat to cover the wave of emotion. He had to get a grip. Intellectually he knew he had nothing in common with the man who had done this, but his intellect was only one small part of the equation. He was a healer, yet in this instant, it was the crushing guilt of the perpetrator that sat on his shoulders.

Owen had excused himself to allow Cristina to conduct the more personal, female parts of the exam, and had gone into the men's room to regroup. He washed his face in the sink, avoiding looking at himself in the mirror at all costs, and did his best to dry off with a paper towel. Their shift was almost over. In another thirty minutes, if he could manage to pull her aside before she left for the day, he would have a little talk with Cristina.


	9. Chapter 9

Callie's lunch with Meredith never materialized. The victims of a high speed, multi-vehicle accident had begun arriving at 11:45, and one of the cars had been an old junker with precious little protection for the occupants. The entire front end had collapsed, crushing the legs and pelvises of those in the front seat and giving Callie plenty to do through her lunch hour and beyond. They had rescheduled and were now sitting at a table at the Starbucks down the street, purposely avoiding Joe's to guard against the possibility of running into either Cristina or Owen.

"Owen pulled me aside on my way in today," Callie began.

Meredith was instantly intrigued. "Seriously? What did he say?"

"He apologized to me. Said he wanted me to know that he would never intentionally hurt Cristina, that he was asleep when he strangled her. He says he doesn't remember any of it..."

"Do you believe him?"

"Yeah, I think I do. I mean, maybe I'm a sucker for a good sob story, but he couldn't have been more sincere. And I was having a lot of trouble getting my mind around the idea of him as some kind of crazed lunatic. He just never struck me that way before... He's always seemed incredibly... decent."

"Derek told me last night that he's sure Owen has PTSD… said he's suspected it for a while... "

"Yeah, Owen mentioned that." Callie sipped her coffee and made a face. "Ugh. Why did we come here? I want a real drink. This stuff sucks."

Meredith gave her a small smile and leaned forward to begin her account. "Well, here's what I wanted to tell you before... Cristina got really mad at me last night when I told her I thought she did the right thing to break up with him. She said I didn't get it, and said that Owen was a... a hero. Apparently he survived some kind of horrible ambush over in Iraq and was the only one to get out. He lost like 20 people all at once..."

"That'll mess with your head, I'd imagine," Callie nodded thoughtfully.

"Do you suppose it's true?"

"Why would somebody lie about something like that?"

"I don't know. I guess I just have trouble trusting him at all after what he did. I mean, he really hurt her... I can't even think about him right now. I'm too worried about her."

"Yeah, me too. But **she** thinks about him. And I think she really cares about him."

"That doesn't mean I have to, though..."

"No, but it might be easier to talk to her about it if you did care a little. Then she might not get so defensive."

Meredith gave her a look that needed no translation. _You're probably right but I don't have to like it._

"By the way" Callie continued, "she woke up screaming last night... scared the living shit out of me. At first I thought he came back to finish off the job..."

"You see? You don't trust him either."

"That's not what I... I was half asleep, Meredith. It was just a gut reaction."

"Was he there?"

"No! Of course not... but she was shaking, and she just acted like it was no big deal."

"I know. She keeps telling me she's fine, but how can you be fine after something like that? And clearly if she's having nightmares, she's not fine, right? That doesn't sound very fine to me..."

"No, it's not," Callie shrugged her shoulders, "...but Cristina isn't exactly the type to admit to anyone that she's having a problem."

Meredith nodded and took a sip of her coffee. She made a face. "I hate decaf. Why do people bother?" Callie smiled in agreement, then continued. "Anyway, I told Owen about the screaming and he seemed really upset about it. He even asked me if I thought he should just leave her alone instead of trying to talk to her... "

"You told him yes, right? You told him to leave her alone."

"Actually, no. It's not like he's trying to get back together with her or anything. He just wanted to let her know that he was getting help for his problem, and when I thought about it, it seemed like a good idea... I think he really cares about her, Meredith."

"I don't care," Meredith insisted, "I don't think it's a good idea. If he can't control himself, he needs to leave her alone. I'll be seriously pissed if they start hanging out again."

"I don't know. We have to give them both some credit. I just don't think he's gonna risk hurting her again... and I've never seen her so happy as she's been since he came here. I know you two are really close and all, but you don't live with her. It's like she's a different person when he's around..."

Meredith paused and ran her finger around the lid of her coffee cup. She couldn't argue with that. She'd noticed the difference herself. Still...

"What's **that**?" Callie's eyes had gotten big, and she nodded toward Meredith's hand.

"Oh! Derek and I got engaged last night."

"And you were going to mention this... WHEN???" Callie smiled in disbelief. "I can't believe you two finally made it official! Did he get down on one knee?"

"Better than that..." Meredith's smile was full of mischief.

"Wait... don't tell me yet. This calls for a real drink. Let's get the hell out of here."

"That's the best idea I've heard all day. Let's go."


	10. Chapter 10

Finally, their shift was over. As Owen got ready to leave the Pit, he spotted Cristina ducking inside the curtain to check on their rape victim before departing. He heard a low murmur of voices and decided to take the opportunity to go change out of his scrubs. Boot camp had taught him the art of the 60 second clothing change, and that was not a skill one ever forgot when the consequences for failure had been incredibly onerous not just for him, but for his entire squad. He was certain he would finish before her and wouldn't miss her on the way out. When he was done, he leaned against the wall across from the entrance to the Residents' locker room and waited. Cristina emerged a few minutes later, and did a double take when she saw him.

He moved away from the wall and approached her. "Can we talk?"

"Uh, sure." She just stood there.

"Not here."

"Uh...ok. Want to go to Joe's? Or sit in the lobby?"

_She's not suggesting anywhere private_, he noticed, and felt a pang of sadness. They had slowly and steadily built a bond of comfortable safety and intimacy between them in the past few months, and with the realization that that was truly gone, Owen began grieving that loss among the many others he was already dealing with. He understood her wish to keep things public, but neither of her suggestions appealed to him, and he nodded in the general direction of her building. "How about the bench in front of your place? Would that be ok?"

"Fine." She started walking and he fell in step beside her. His hand itched to reach for hers, but he knew better than to try. It was so hard to know how to be with her now. They had not established any ground rules for this breakup, and all he had to go by was his suspicion that whatever he wanted to do to get closer to her, it was probably wrong.

The evening was chilly, but they both had coats, and with daylight savings time, it wasn't dark yet. The crossed the street in silence and sat down.

"How... how are you?" he began.

"Not so good," she turned and met his gaze. Her eyes were dull with pain. She had hidden it well during their shift, but now it was written all over her.

"Yeah, me either." He felt the emotions begin to surface again, but did his best to keep things neutral. _Stay focused. You have a goal to accomplish._

They were silent for a minute or two. They could have sat there quietly for much longer, but Owen finally spoke up.

"Look, I just wanted you to know that I'm...I'm getting help. I went to Derek last night..."

Cristina looked at him in surprise. "Derek? Why Derek?"

"He approached me after... after what happened. I guess Meredith must have told him something. He offered to help."

"And you took him up on it..."

Owen's gave a self-deprecating chuckle. "No, actually. I wasn't ready to hear it yet. I insulted the hell out of him."

Amusement lit Cristina's eyes. "I hope you got in a good one?"

Owen smiled back. It was so refreshing to see her like this after what they'd been through that he found himself drinking in the moment, wanting to prolong it for as long as possible. "A little too good, actually. I was worried he'd throw me out of his office when I finally went back to see him."

"But he didn't..."

"No, he didn't. He's a decent guy... better than decent, actually. He acted like it never happened. So... I had an MRI last night."

Cristina's eyebrows shot up. "And?"

"Nothing definitive… Well, that's not entirely true. I don't have a brain tumor, so that's good news. He said he had to rule that out first... but PTSD can show up sometimes on an MRI, and he didn't see any evidence on mine. He said it might be because the incident that caused it was relatively recent. It can take time for the changes to develop, if they do at all."

Cristina nodded. He wasn't telling her anything about the syndrome she hadn't already uncovered in her research, but it was good to hear that Owen was finally getting educated as well. "So where does that leave you?"

"With an appointment for a sleep study two nights from now, and an appointment with a shrink early next week."

"Wow. You didn't waste any time." He could hear the approval in her voice, but didn't feel comfortable taking any credit.

"Yeah, I did. I wasted months." Owen turned to her, his eyes darting to her hand in her lap. As if reading his mind, she reached over and took his hand in both of hers, giving it a little squeeze, and he took a breath before continuing. "You tried to get me to do this a while ago and I was too much of an idiot to listen to you. And now... now I've really done some damage."

"I'm fine, Owen."

"You're not fine, Cristina. Callie told me what happened last night. You're not fine."

Agitated, Cristina pulled her hands away abruptly and rubbed them back and forth on her jeans. '"Oh, geez, why can't that girl keep her mouth shut? It's probably all over the hospital by now."

"I don't think so. I asked her to keep things quiet, if that's even possible for her. I think she's aware this is delicate... anyway, that's beside the point, Cristina. You woke up screaming. I know a little too much about that kind of thing. You're not fine."

"I had a nightmare. It happens. It's not a big deal."

"About me. Your nightmare was about me, wasn't it? You were reliving the event."

Cristina said nothing.

Owen stared at her until she looked at him. He held her gaze for a long moment. "You and I... we're more alike than even I realized. And I've thrown this same bullshit around for long enough to know it when I see it."

"Look, it's happened once..."

Owen held up a hand to stop her from continuing. "Just listen for a minute. It's bad enough for me to know I injured you physically. I… I can hardly bear to think of it. Can you even imagine what it's doing to me to know that you're having nightmares because of me? That I'm **in** them?" He broke off with a bitter laugh, emotion momentarily hampering his ability to articulate what was coming next. "Good god, Cristina, I'm having enough trouble dealing with my own issues without having to deal with yours. And I **will** have to deal with yours if you won't. Even if you don't want me to, I will. I can't cause something like this and then not try to fix it. So just cut it out, ok? Something really traumatic happened to you. You probably need to go talk to someone about it."

"I..."

He didn't give her time to formulate her denial, and forged ahead. "I realize I have no right to ask anything of you... even if it's because I care. I feel selfish even trying. But I'm asking anyway. If this happens again, promise me you'll go see someone. Would you do that for me?"

Their eyes met, and her expression softened ever so slightly. "I'll think about it."

"Fair enough." It was clear he would get no further with her this evening. And that fit. No one could have convinced him to go seek help after one nightmare, either. He got up to go, and Cristina rose too. He kept his hands in the pockets of his coat, though he really wanted to give her a hug. They stood there and looked at each other for a moment, and then Cristina surprised him by moving in and putting her arms around his waist, and he returned the embrace, letting out the breath he had not even been aware he was holding. She buried her face in his shoulder. "I'm proud of you. I'm really glad you're getting help. Thanks for telling me."

He squeezed her tightly and pressed his lips to the top of her head, relief warring with a surge of incredible heartache. "I'm so sorry... I'm sorry I ruined everything."

"I know."

They stood for a moment, just holding each other, before Cristina disengaged herself. She turned and let herself into her building without looking back, and Owen walked slowly back to his truck. Telling her about his efforts, expressing his concern for her, asking her to get help for herself - he had done all he could for now. In the context of their relationship, just making love to her would have been enough of a paradigm shift for one day; losing her and leaving his denial behind in that same 24 hour span had magnified it until he felt like he'd gone to sleep in one country and woken up in another. The difference between the way he saw things yesterday and the way he saw them today couldn't be more pronounced, and although he was certain her reality had shifted in the past day or so too, it was a lot to ask for her to be on the same page with him at this early stage.

With this shift came the increasingly galling realization of just how much responsibility he actually had for this chain of events. He could try and shrug it off by saying he'd been asleep, but he couldn't deny that he had resisted getting help when doing so would have been a hell of a lot easier than it was now. She had asked him to. She had practically fucking begged him to. And the fact that he hadn't listened, hadn't respected her opinion enough to give it any credence - that **was** his fault, even if he hadn't been awake for the actual offense.

And it was too late now - too late to do this the easier way. If he had only listened to her, he could have had her by his side through all of it. He knew without a doubt that she would have been there for him in every possible way. Now, the descent into the darkness was his to bear alone, and while he was relatively sure she would walk it with him in spirit, that was a far cry from having her to hold at the end of the day, to share a drink with at Joe's, or to take the edge off by making her squirm with pleasure in all the many ways he had conjured up since their lovemaking yesterday. He knew he had no one to blame but himself, and realized that this was probably the first of many lessons he was likely to learn as he walked this lonely path. He could only hope that she would still be there when he came out the other side.

If he came out.

-----------------

"Look at that!" Meredith hissed as they made their way down the block to Joe's. She pulled Callie aside suddenly, so they could hide around the corner of the building but still see the front of Cristina's place. Callie glanced over toward where Meredith was pointing, only to see Owen and Cristina embracing. "I really will kill that guy. Can't he leave her alone?"

"Meredith," Callie tried to calm her down, "he said he was gonna talk to her. And it's not like they're kissing or anything. It's just a hug. And look, she's going up without him. He's just doing what he told me he would do. You need to chill out."

"I can't. It's like watching your friend walk in front of a truck. He's already hurt her once."

"And how many times did Derek hurt you before you got this little gem on your finger?" Callie challenged her.

"That's different. He never tried to **strangle** me!" She gave Callie an incredulous look, "You're on his side! I can't believe it. How could you be on his side?"

"I am not. I talked to him, that's all, and if you do you might feel differently too."

"I don't want to talk to him. I have nothing to say to him."

Callie had had enough, and she gave Meredith a hard look. "Did it occur to you that maybe he has something to say to you?" She shook her head at the defiance on Meredith's face. "Look, do it anyway... Just do it, ok? Then, if you still feel this way, I'll listen to more of what you have to say. Now let's go. I want to get a buzz on and hear about Derek's proposal." She peeked around the corner to make sure that Owen had already crossed their path and was unlikely to spot them, then took Meredith's arm and began marching her in the direction of Joe's.


	11. Chapter 11

It became clear to Owen within 10 minutes of starting his shift that he was going to have to have a talk with Meredith Grey. If the intense stares hadn't been a solid enough clue, the edge to her voice when she spoke to him would have given her away. He recognized the tone from the time when she and Cristina had been fighting, a supercilious, holier-than-thou inflection that ran up his spine like fingernails on a blackboard. He had worked in tense environments before, but it had usually been external factors that caused the tension, things like incoming RPGs or the overwhelm of triaging a battlefield full of fresh casualties. This felt artificial - trivial, even - by comparison, but he was aware that in the phenomenon he now called his life, it was all too real. Guilt over the events of the past few days aside, Cristina's friend or not, he was damned if he'd let some snot-nosed Resident make him uncomfortable in his own ER.

It had been a busy morning, but there was a lull around 11am, and he decided to seize the opportunity.

"Dr. Grey, may I have a word with you?"

Meredith glanced at him in surprise, a look that turned into an simmering glare when she got a whiff of his intention. "Is something wrong, Dr. Hunt?" she asked innocently.

"Good question. How about you and I find someplace less public to have this conversation?"

"Um… I'm not going into an on-call room with you, Dr. Hunt."

_Unbelievable._ It had been a long morning with her already, and it was too bad that Owen was entering into this conversation already exasperated. "I'm not asking you to," he ground out, "Come on." He waved in the general direction of the ambulance bay and nodded for her to follow him outside, then sat on the bench and waited for her to join him.

"Do you have a problem with me, Meredith?" he asked when she'd gotten settled.

Meredith didn't waste time pretending she didn't know what he was talking about. "You can't hurt my person and expect me to just stand by and be ok with it. The least you can do is leave her alone after what you did."

"Your… your what?"

"My person. Cristina's my person. And I'm her person. And we look out for each other. You hurt her. Physically. Hands around the neck." She provided a visual for that one that Owen could have done without. "I just don't think she should be associating with you anymore."

Owen sighed. This was going to be at least as much of a pain in the ass as he'd anticipated. "Look, I thought Derek was going to talk to you about that..."

"Yes, but that doesn't change the facts. You did what you did, didn't you? I don't think there's any excuse for what you did. I mean, I get that you were in a war and all, and I'm sure it wasn't easy, but it's not safe for her to be around you if you can't control yourself... so I think you should just leave her alone."

Owen put his head in his hands for a minute and took a deep breath before responding. He couldn't believe his own ears. _Did she really just say:_ "I get that you were in a war and all, and I'm sure it wasn't easy……" _God save me from naive civilians.  
_

"Ok, yes, I did what I did – and no one regrets that more than me. You have no idea how much. But I was asleep….I wasn't aware I was doing it…. Are you sure Derek talked to you?" Meredith nodded in the affirmative, but still looked clueless. "It's not like I have trouble controlling myself when I'm awake, Meredith. I would never, ever hurt Cristina. And you can be sure I won't put either of us in a position again where I might be asleep around her, at least not unless this whole thing is resolved to the point where I'm sure it'll never happen again. I care about her at least as much as you do."

Meredith looked at him as though anyone caring about Cristina as much as she did was impossible, and Owen had to work to keep his temper under control. He was beginning to really appreciate Callie, who had actually listened to what he had to say and formed her opinions accordingly. Still, Meredith was Cristina's best friend. He had to make the effort.

"I don't care. It doesn't change my opinion. I still think you should leave her alone."

This was like trying to have a conversation with that obnoxious, endlessly repeating announcement at the airport. _ Is she even hearing a word I say? _Owen decided to give it one more shot, despite watching the last shreds of his patience evaporate. "Look, I get that you want to protect her. So do I. But, don't be such a hypocrite. As I recall, when you two were fighting I saw you punch a few pretty serious holes in her yourself..." He waited for her to look at him before he continued. "To be honest, it was painful to watch, and it got in the way of running an efficient ER and OR around here. I could have stepped in and talked to you about it, but I figured you two were adults and could work out your own problems, and it looks like you did. Good for you... Now I'm asking for the same courtesy. Support her. Be there for her. She needs it. But please stay out of what's between us. It's none of your business."

Meredith managed to focus on the first part of what he said and ignore the rest. "How can you compare a few snide comments during a silly fight, and choking someone in their bed? They're totally different."

_Of course they're different. Does she think I don't get that? She's totally missing the point._ He _could_ try and explain it one more time, but he had reached his limit, and the words were out before he could censor himself. "Oh, right… sorry. They **are** totally different. Yours was intentional." The indignation on her face was reward enough, and he did not regret putting her in her place. _This little control freak needs to be taken down a peg or two._

Meredith glared at him and stood up. Owen stood too. She was turning to walk away when Owen stopped her. "Just answer one question for me, Meredith, before we go back inside and attempt to work together again. I'm really trying to understand how your mind works. I heard you went to the prison to watch that serial killer get executed. Why did you do that?"

The change of subject caught her off guard, but she answered anyway. "Because he was all alone, and the only people there to watch were people who **wanted** him to die..."

"He slaughtered five women in cold blood!"

"But I didn't know them. I knew him. And he needed someone there who didn't only see the awful part of him. I felt kind of sorry for him…"

"Huh." He just stared at her for a minute, shaking his head in disbelief, and walked back inside.

Meredith was left to ponder the uneasy feeling that he had just scored a huge point at her expense, with no clue what it could be.


	12. Chapter 12

Owen felt slightly ridiculous showing up at work the next day with his overnight bag packed with, among other things, his pillow - kind of like a little boy heading out for a slumber party. The directions from the sleep clinic, however, had been explicit. He was to bring his own pillow unless he wanted to use theirs, and he had handled enough hospital pillows to know that was not a viable option. He already had enough trouble sleeping in his own bed with everything he needed in place. A crunchy pillow would definitely keep him awake.

"Going on a trip, Dr. Hunt?" Alex asked as he saw Owen enter the double doors with his small duffle.

"Uh... no." Owen had no desire to discuss this, and just continued on his way, leaving Alex behind with a perplexed look on his face.

The day passed swiftly enough. Avoiding caffeine became a bit onerous as the afternoon slump hit him, but he figured those instructions made sense. Missing a cold beer after work was more of a problem. When his shift was over, he went out for pizza and returned around 8pm to shower before checking himself into the sleep clinic. He had enjoyed a small chuckle over the prohibition on hair gels, which could potentially interfere with the electrodes they would be placing on his scalp. He knew a couple of other doctors at SGH who would probably have had a stroke over that one. Fortunately, he did not indulge, so there was nothing to worry about.

Owen never slept in anything, and he had puzzled over what to wear for bed. In the end he brought along a light-weight button down shirt and some scrub pants. He would have preferred a T, but the instructions specified button-down so that all the electrodes could be attached easily. He hoped he wouldn't need to wear it at all, but didn't want to be empty-handed in case a shirtless male patient made anyone uneasy. As he mentally reviewed his checklist for the evening, it gave him a moment of contentment to imagine that he'd probably thought of everything from every angle. Being prepared lessened the anxiety over the procedure, which he knew wasn't painful or even terribly unpleasant, but still made him uneasy. _It's a stretch to be the patient instead of the doctor for a change, that's all. _ Not a bad perspective to remember when he showed up for work the next day and had to deal with anxious people who probably never expected to land themselves in an ER.

It took almost 40 minutes before he was completely hooked up, at which point he wondered how anyone could sleep with so many electrodes and straps attached to them. In addition to the ones all over his face and scalp, they were glued to his chest and legs too. Most annoying, though, was the little tube attached just below his nose. He didn't think there was any way in hell he would make it through the night without yanking that one off in his sleep. Since it was meant to measure sleep apnea, and he was relatively certain that was not one of his problems, he tried to get them to leave it off, but the orders had been for a full work-up and the technician wasn't comfortable deviating, so Owen let it go.

After an uncomfortable half hour trying to catch up on some medical journals, he gave up and turned out the light, and somehow he managed to close his eyes and drift off. He got in a few hours, which was typical for him these days, and didn't recall anything unusual about the night. Even when he was in his own bed, he typically woke up several times and stared at the ceiling, sometimes for hours, and this night was no exception. No one looked at him strangely as he exited the clinic, so he figured nothing too terrible could have happened during his stay, and as he left he breathed a sign of relief to have one more hurdle overcome.

Derek had pulled a few strings on his behalf, and rather than the usual 1-2 week wait for results, Owen had an appointment that day for interpretation of the study. He would come by over lunch and meet with Dr. Davies, supposedly the best sleep guy in Seattle. He hoped he would get some good news to carry him through the weekend. Monday was his appointment with Dr. Wyatt.

One step at a time, things were definitely moving forward.


	13. Chapter 13

Owen carried his sandwich and coffee back to the sleep clinic for his noon appointment, and Dr. Davies was waiting for him. A pleasant guy in his late 40s, with greying temples and a nearly perfect Grecian profile, Davies was the epitome of laid back. Owen could see how he must have been attracted to sleep as a specialty, because he exuded an aura of relaxation that could only be a positive when dealing with patients who were probably out of their minds with insomnia. They had already done a complete history at his first appointment, so after a few pleasantries, they wasted no time and sat right down in front of a video monitor.

"I could pore over the graphs and show you your sleep patterns, but I think in this case a picture is worth a thousand words," he said as he turned on the screen. Owen saw that the tape was cued up, with him lying frozen on the bed. The night vision technology gave everything a ghostly glow. "Ready?"

"As I'll ever be."

"Ok, this was about 45 minutes after you fell asleep. See, here you're sleeping normally, and then... here we go..."

Owen's sucked in a breath as he observed his eyes popping open suddenly. He saw himself sit up in bed, gazing blankly into space. Even from a distance, he found the vacant stare terrifying, and wondered with dismay if this was what Cristina had been looking at when she'd fought to get him off her. Then he watched in amazement as he turned in place, grabbed his pillow in both hands, and began squeezing it violently as if he was wringing out laundry. This went on for several minutes, at which point he dropped the pillow on the bed and commenced punching it with his left hand, over and over again. Up until now, everything had unfolded without a sound, but now his grunts of exertion could be heard over the monitor. Owen couldn't tear his eyes away from the scene in front of him, and watched in horrified silence as this assault went on for another 5 minutes or so. Then, as suddenly as it began, it was over. He lay his head back down on the pillow and closed his eyes. Dr. Davies shut off the monitor.

"From the look on your face, I gather you have no memory of having done this?"

"No, none at all. I had no idea." Mortified would not be too strong a word for how he felt.

"This is pretty straightforward, then. This is one of several parasomnias. You've probably heard of all of them: sleepwalking, sleep talking, sleep terrors, nightmares, and even teeth-grinding to name the most common. This would fall under the category of sleep terrors, or night terrors. Yours is a bit different than what I typically see because most people shout or scream when they start, and you don't, but otherwise it's a classic case."

"So it's not a nightmare?"

"No. Lots of people think they're the same, but there's a big difference. See how you got up and were very physical, with your eyes wide open? With nightmares, if you get up, you're awake. If your eyes are open, you're awake. And if you awaken during REM sleep, you'll remember the dream you were just having. With nightmares you don't get up and do things in a sleep state like... like what you did there. So no, it's not a nightmare."

"So it would be possible for me to hurt someone when this is going on, and not be aware of it?"

"Absolutely. It's very common, in fact. People can become quite belligerent, and it's very difficult to rouse them. There are many cases where bed partners have been injured by someone in the midst of a night terror."

Owen nodded. This confirmed what Derek had told him a few days ago. Although he knew what he had experienced, the validation helped. Until this moment, he had entertained a tiny frisson of doubt about his version of the events, borne of the judgment of others and his own intense self-criticism. With this evidence in front of his face, he could no longer deny what had happened, and it was as much of a relief as it was a shock to see himself in that state. He **had** been fully asleep. He had not been aware of what he was doing. There was proof now, empirical evidence, and even if it didn't change what he'd done to Cristina, he really could give himself a break.

"Have you?"

"Excuse me?" Owen had been lost in his own thoughts and missed the question.

"Injured someone. Have you?"

"Yes. My girlfriend. I... I choked her."

Davies nodded but stayed very low key. It was clearly not the first such story he had heard. "Is she all right?"

"Yes... I mean physically, yes. Emotionally...I'm not so sure. Her roommate woke me up but if she hadn't..." Owen imagined himself in the second stage he had just observed, punching the pillow repeatedly, and he felt a wave of nausea when he considered that it could have been Cristina's face he was pounding.

"You're very fortunate. It's not always possible to awaken someone from this state."

Owen nodded. He didn't feel very fortunate right now. _This is it_, he thought. _I can never sleep with her again. _He was so lost in his own misery over this that he almost missed Davies' next comment.

"There's a drug I'd like you to try. It's been very successful for people with PTSD-based night terrors, and it's been tested extensively with combat veterans. I'm hopeful it'll help you."

Owen perked up at this. Was it possible a drug could hold the answer? "What is it?" He had read up on all of the libido-killing anti-depressants and was not too keen on taking any of them.

"It's called Prazosin. You've probably heard of it for..."

"... blood pressure?" Owen interrupted.

"...and prostate problems. That's right. It's already being used widely for those, and as a wonderful serendipity it's been found to improve sleep and reduce or even eliminate night terrors in most of the people who take it. Side effects are minimal, and it's been tested so well over so many years that it's extremely safe. You really have nothing to lose."

"Won't it affect my blood pressure?"

"No. It doesn't do anything if your blood pressure is normal. And yours is normal. You might experience some dizziness when you stand up during the first week or so as your body adjusts, but that goes away."

"Forgive me for asking so many questions, but do we know how this works?"

"We do. In a nutshell, it blocks norepinephrine, and norepinephrine lightens sleep. Night terrors occur during light sleep or disrupted REM sleep. By increasing your healthy REM sleep, your dreams will normalize and you will likely stop doing... that," he gestured toward the video. "This doesn't mean you'll never have another nightmare, but it should be the typical kind, not something where you do anything dangerous. And you can work on the nightmares in therapy."

"How long does it take to start working?"

"Not long. You start at a low dose and taper up over a period of 4 weeks. We should know by then if it's working or not. I'd like to have you come back at that point and do another sleep study."

An unfamiliar surge of optimism was coursing through Owen's system as he considered the possibilities. Could it be this simple? He was loathe to get his hopes up and be disappointed in the end, but it was better than the despair he'd been feeling since the incident happened.

"Make the appointment on your way out," Davies suggested. "I squeezed you in this time, but we do get pretty booked up."

"No problem." He waited while Dr. Davies scribbled the prescription on his pad and handed it to him. "Take it at bedtime. Just follow the dosing schedule on the bottle. Call me in a couple of weeks and let me know how it's going."

Owen's mind was racing at a mile a minute as he processed all this new information. He could hardly wait to leave and drop off the prescription downstairs. He got up and shook Davies' hand. "Thank you. I'll be in touch."

Just then his beeper sounded, and after a glance at it he handed the prescription back to Davies. "Would you mind calling this in for me downstairs instead? Looks like I've got a major trauma rolling in."

"No problem."

Owen walked out with his cold coffee and untouched sandwich in his hand. He had been so wrapped up in the session he'd forgotten to eat. He dumped them in the trash as he jogged down to the PIT to face the rest of his day.

---------

Friday afternoons tended to be difficult, and this Friday was no exception. When he reached the ER, the EMS units were just pulling up, and he was greeted with the aftermath of a drive-by shooting. The worst cases were two kids with multiple gunshot wounds, one who looked to be about 14 and the other with a driver's license that said he was 17. Apparently they were the targets, and their gang insignia and colors told the story they were unable to tell. Several cars pulled up afterward with a few bystanders who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had absorbed some ricochets. Nothing too serious there. He passed the easier cases off to the Residents and interns, and focused on the two boys.

The 14-year-old, unfortunately, was brain dead by the time Owen reached him, and there was nothing much to do but call in the transplant team in the hopes of getting some benefit out of this situation. He was yet to be identified, and finding the boy's parents for consent was probably going to be the biggest hurdle there. He struggled all afternoon to save the 17-year-old in the OR, and after repairing a punctured lung, removing a spleen, and patching multiple holes in the boy's bowel, he had hopes that he would recover. He had called Shepherd in for a neuro consult and they had worked together to remove a bullet lodged next to the spine. They wouldn't know until he woke up whether or not he had any paralysis, but the initial signs looked promising. He breathed a sigh of relief as he stepped out of the OR and washed up. Avoiding a gunshot to the head had been this kid's saving grace.

In the midst of all this, a small corner of his mind was working on another problem. When he had set his schedule for the week, he had taken both Saturday and Sunday off in anticipation of enticing Cristina to go away with him somewhere. At the time they had been getting increasingly close, and he had sensed they were ready for a couple of days together. Now the weekend loomed ahead with nothing to fill the hours. He knew Cristina had both days off too, and he longed to pick up the phone and call her. Perhaps he would. But a thought had crept in unbidden during the course of the afternoon and it wasn't letting go, even though he'd tried to shake it off numerous times. By the time his shift was over, he knew what he was going to do on Saturday.

It was time to go visit his mom.

When he examined his motivation, he had to laugh at himself just a little. What months of guilt and Cristina's intense disapproval had failed to accomplish, an appointment with a shrink had expedited almost effortlessly. He'd never been to therapy before, but he imagined himself - like it or not - spilling his guts, and the last thing he needed was something this big in the pile of shit that was likely to come out. Much like making a long overdue apology just prior to going to confession, or flossing for the first time in months before seeing the dentist, he wanted to get his ducks in a row before starting therapy. And now that he'd done the sleep study and had a plan for that situation, things didn't look quite so bleak to him. For the first time since arriving back stateside, he felt strong enough to do it.

Tomorrow, then. He would go see her tomorrow.


	14. Chapter 14

Six miles. Such a minimal distance from his apartment, yet his mother's house couldn't have felt farther away from him these past few months if it had been on Pluto. He had questioned his decision to finally make this visit when he'd gotten up in the morning, but had pushed through with the conviction that it was never going to get any easier. As he drove the familiar route to his childhood home, he had to pull over twice to regroup. When he reached his old street, it was all he could do to keep from turning around and going back to his apartment. The flood of memories from before was almost overwhelming to the person he was now. But it was time. He knew it was time. What he had done by keeping this secret for months would be considered inexcusable in most people's eyes, and the longer he waited the worse it was going to get. His thinking had evolved so much in the last few days, as if he had been shot out of a cannon and was flying over his own life on a trajectory that was already giving him a totally different perspective about his situation. Having the MRI and the sleep study behind him had cleared some of the messy clutter from his mental and emotional plate, and made him able to see things with a bit more objectivity. With this new outlook came a better understanding of just how bad it was to have kept his family in the dark about his whereabouts.

He knew if this visit went wrong, it could set him back significantly, but so far things had been easier than he'd anticipated and he hoped his luck would hold. He had already faced so much in the past few days; it gave him just enough confidence to risk the encounter.

He pulled up to the curb a few doors down from the house and sat in the truck for a good half hour. The neighborhood looked the same. The two storey house where he had grown up was immaculately maintained, and the flower beds were freshly planted with colorful pansies and an assortment of other flowers he couldn't identify by name. His mom had always loved flowers, and had spent many spring days contentedly on her knees with her fingers in the dirt as she lovingly created an eye-catching array every year. Memories rushed in, and a wave of sadness overcame him, mostly from a sense that he could never be here again with that same light-hearted naivete he had enjoyed as a boy. Everyone grows up and moves away from that, of course. He realized that, and he remembered that old saying, _You can't go home again_. But his fall from innocence had been so much more violent and abrupt than most, and he felt compelled to give it a few moments of silence.

Finally, he realized that sitting there was not making it any easier. He got out of his truck and walked slowly over to the house, climbed the steps to the porch, and rang the bell. The frenzied bark of a Golden Retriever resounded from inside, and he smiled as he heard the dog skid into the door in paroxysms of excitement.

He could hear footsteps and his mom's voice as she approached. "All right, Lucy. Calm down. Let's see who it is..." The door opened slowly. "Owen!" Her face lit up with surprise and she grabbed him in a fierce hug. Owen returned the hug, and the realization hit him.

_She knows. _

They held on to each other for several minutes, not speaking, just letting the emotions flow between them as they hung on tightly. The dog was all over them, frantically trying to wedge her nose in between them, jumping up, and generally making a nuisance of herself. Owen finally had to release his mother in favor of squatting down to give the dog her due. It was a welcome distraction from the flood of feelings that was threatening to overwhelm him as he fully registered that he had really gone ahead and taken this step. The dog was beside herself with delight and jumped up into his face, knocking him on his ass and showering him with sloppy doggy kisses. He buried his face in her fur and allowed a couple of the tears he'd been holding back all morning to release themselves into her coat. "Hey, Lucy girl, how's it going?" In all his angst over returning home he had forgotten about how much he missed the damn dog.

Finally his mom spoke. "This is such a surprise, Owen. Did you just get back?"

And it hit him again. _She definitely knows. _ She was a lousy liar, and he had no patience for dancing around this now that he was finally here. The dog was settling down a bit, and he got up and faced the woman who had birthed him and who was now lying through her teeth. "How long have you known?"

She tried to keep up the facade for a split second, then gave up with an uncomfortable smile. "I never could keep anything from you, could I? Well, don't just stand here on the porch. Come on in." She turned and led the way into the house. Her outward demeanor was calm, but she was exuding nervous energy and it was making Owen jumpy; he hoped that once they cleared the air, it would dissipate. She had grabbed hold of his hand as if she couldn't believe he was actually there, and they both sat down on the living room couch. The house looked the same, though smaller - a sensation he had had before when returning after a long time away. Nothing had changed.

"How long, Mom?"

She sighed and shook her head. "Oh, that Beth..." she waved her hand dismissively, "she came racing right over here as soon as she saw you at the hospital. She was very upset, Owen. Wanted me to march over there and bring you to your senses. I think she still hoped you two could make it work. Thought I could browbeat you into it."

Owen shook his head in disbelief. What a childish little bitch his ex had turned out to be. She had to know it would destroy his mother to find out this way, but she was too selfish to think about anyone but herself. He had known he was well rid of her, but this nailed the coffin good and shut.

"But you didn't do it. You didn't come after me. Why not?"

"I won't say I wasn't tempted. I was furious when I found out you had let your poor mother worry all those months for nothing. But I know you, Owen. Even as a little boy, you were always the most considerate of my children. And when I thought about it, I figured you must have a very good reason for staying away. I knew you'd come back when you were ready."

Owen was flooded with a mixture of gratitude and regret. Tears stung his eyes and he blinked them back. How had he doubted her all these months? She was so much stronger than he'd given her credit for. In the end, she'd believed in him so much more than he'd believed in her.

She continued, "Besides, just knowing you were back in the States and safe was a big comfort to me. I didn't want to rush you. And I was right, because here you are - of your own free will." Her eyes teared up at this last statement, and she looked away. Owen was overcome with emotion as well and he pulled her into a tight hug. The dog whined and pawed at them, always upset at being excluded, and he reached a hand down to pat her head, the other still firmly holding his mom close. They held each other for several moments before breaking apart and continuing.

"Explain one thing to me, Mom. I've called you every week and pretended I was still over there. How did you manage to not let on that you knew?"

She gave him a knowing look. "Probably the same way you managed to lie to me every week and think you were getting away with it. I think we hear what we want to hear... And the phone is easier. I think it's my face that gives me away."

Owen nodded. She was probably right. "Mom, a lot has happened. I... I haven't been dealing with it so well. It's... changed me."

"And?"

"And... I didn't want to disappoint you. I don't know if I'll ever be the same. No, strike that... I know I'll never be the same."

He didn't know what he had expected her reaction to be. Pity? Rejection? Minimizing what he'd just said? Or maybe just a blank look of incomprehension... He got none of those.

She just stared at him in bemused silence for a moment, quirked an eyebrow at him, and finally said, "So?"

Owen couldn't help himself. Her impression of him was so dead-on that he burst out laughing, and she joined in. _God, he had missed her._ His relief was so tangible he barely knew what to do with it. With this reunion, and her acceptance of him as he was in this moment, a piece of his heart shifted back into place that he hadn't even realized was missing. He had made the cardinal error of seriously underestimating her, this woman with the spine of steel who had raised him and his younger sisters on her own after his father's untimely death. She had been devastated with grief, but had kept her sense of humor even then. Why had he jumped to the conclusion she was too fragile to handle the changes in him? When had she ever not been there for him when he'd needed her? It was an indication of how warped his thinking had become since his return that he would have believed she wasn't up to it and gone to such lengths to avoid seeing her. In the end, all he had accomplished was to make himself miserable for no good reason when he could have been drawing on her strength and love all along.

Staring now into her smiling eyes, he began to see the silver lining peeking out from the gathering storm clouds that had formed over his life in the past week. If not for the choking incident, he would not be sitting here right now, reunited with his mother. While he would gladly give up all the perks he had already received to go back and erase what he'd done to Cristina, he knew that was impossible. Given that, the fact that there was some good to come out of all this gave him hope for the future.


	15. Chapter 15

Of course he had to stay for lunch, and they talked for hours in the kitchen while she prepared her world famous tuna salad and mixed up a batch of his favorite walnut brownies. She had a lot of questions and he did his best to answer them. He was surprised to learn that she knew all about the ambush and what had happened to his unit, because he had never mentioned it to her himself. Apparently she had received a call from the base commander after the incident, with reassurances that her son had survived and was ok. Owen let her know that he was not ready to talk about it, and she wisely let it alone. She had known some of the dead, old buddies of his who had come home on leave with him on occasion. While he didn't feel comfortable dredging it all up right now, she was able to share some of his pain without any discussion. In a day full of surprises, here was yet another thing he had not imagined would be possible.

"What about Beth, Owen? What really happened there? Not that I ever thought she was right for you, but you went out for such a long time and seemed so committed to marrying her."

Owen had known this question was coming, but still wasn't sure how to explain it. "I guess I just outgrew her, Mom. I just... realized it wouldn't work, and I knew it for a long time but didn't do anything about it. It was easy to keep things at a distance while I was over there... pretend everything would be fine once we were together again, even if I knew it really wasn't true. But it finally got to be too much. She wrote me constantly - and I mean **constantly** - all this cheery stuff about the kids in her class, and what she bought at the store that day... and one day I realized I didn't have anything left to say back to her. I couldn't stand it anymore. It was like we were speaking two different languages. So I broke up with her." This next part was hard to admit, and he took a breath before continuing, "I... I did it in an email, which I realize wasn't the nicest thing to do, but at the time it seemed my best option. I felt like I couldn't wait another day, and my next leave wasn't for a couple of months... I just couldn't keep either of us hanging that long."

She sighed. "To tell you the truth, I'm glad you broke it off, though I'm sure I raised you better than to break up with your fiancee in an email, for goodness sake. The least you could have done was sit down and write a real letter." She scowled at him, but he could tell she wasn't all that upset. She had always been good at picking her battles, and clearly this was not one she chose to pursue. "She's a sweet girl, but so damn helpless it made me want to strangle her sometimes." Owen winced at her choice of words, but said nothing. "I worried for the two of you." she continued. "That's the kind of thing that can be endearing when you're dating, but it can really grate on you when you have to live with it long term."

"Why didn't you tell me this before? I thought you loved her."

"Yes, I did care for her - just not as your wife. You deserve someone who can stand on her own two feet." She thought about it for a minute, as if deciding how much more to say, and then continued. "For the most part, I've done my best to stay out of my children's love lives. I could have talked till I was blue in the face, but you kids would never have listened to any lessons I wanted to give you about relationships. There's just no substitute for firsthand experience, is there? And your sisters both made their mistakes up front and then married well. I figured you'd either come around and dump her, or marry her and make it work. Either way, I'd support you... Anyway, let's clear these dishes and go sit out back."

The afternoon wore on and they drifted from subject to subject, throwing a soggy tennis ball for a relentless Lucy and catching up on things they had not been able to discuss on the phone when a wall of lies had stood between them. He told her about the sleep study he had just done and his appointment with Dr. Wyatt. He told her about his new job and some of the people he worked with. He did not tell her about Cristina. She was not in his life the way he wanted her to be, and the questions that would arise out of that conversation were ones he chose to avoid for now. Hopefully there would come a time when he could introduce her as his girlfriend, but that time was not now, and he couldn't bear to bring up this relationship as it stood in the present, given that he didn't even know how to describe it accurately.

"Are you the only one who knows I'm back?"

"Yes, damn you." She reached over and gave him a swat on the arm. "It's practically killed me to keep your sisters in the dark, but I knew if I told them I'd never hear the end of it, and there was no way in heck I could keep one or the other of them from tracking you down and wringing your neck." Owen winced inwardly again at her choice of words. "As it is..." she placed her hand on his and gave him one of her signature looks, "you're going to have some 'splainin' to do when they find out, young man."

He returned her playful glance, then reverted to a more serious tone. "Good... I mean that's good that you didn't say anything. Thank you. I know it's a lot to ask, but I'd appreciate it if you'd keep this to yourself for just a little while longer. I'm not ready to deal with them yet. I'll... I'll let you know when I am."

"Ok, but don't ask me to keep this up too much longer. You have a new nephew, you know... Everyone keeps asking about you, and there's only so much I can hold in. As you've already figured out, I'm a lousy liar."

"I'll do my best to make an honest woman out of you as soon as I can. I promise." He gave her a small smile. The sense of relief he felt at finally banishing this secret was enormous. Once he had time to fully process today's events, he would reassess and decide about the rest of his family.

------------

In the car on the way home, he finally gave in to his impulse and picked up the phone to call Cristina. She answered on the first ring.

"Hi"

"Hi."

"I really need to touch base with you."

"Ok."

"Can I take you out for lunch tomorrow?

"Ok."

Owen chuckled. _Ok? That's it?_ Today was full of surprises, and once again Owen was struck with the fact that nothing was turning out to be as difficult as he had made it in his own mind. "I'll pick you up at 11. Will that work?"

"Yes."

These monosyllabic responses were not like her at all. "Are you alone?"

"No."

Ah. Meredith was there. "Got it," he said. "I'll see you tomorrow."


	16. Chapter 16

Owen pulled up to the curb in front of Cristina's apartment at 11:00am to find her sitting out front on the bench, her shoulder bag beside her. She was on the phone and gave him the "wait" signal as she ended the call. It was good to see her; he had barely caught a glimpse of her during the last couple of days, and he had really missed the contact. They had gone from spending an increasing amount of time together to virtually none, and he was feeling the pain of withdrawal. She was a hard habit to break.

He stepped out of the truck and went around to open the passenger door, and she shook her head.

"You know, I can open my own car door."

"I know. Humor me. I can't help myself," he said as he gave her a hand up into the cab.

He got back in and turned to her as she buckled her seat belt. "Thanks for being willing to see me today. I know you don't have to do this. I really appreciate it."

She didn't seem too pleased at this statement. "You're making this awkward, Owen."

"I am?"

"Yes. Let's just go."

He was puzzled at her comment but she was right. It WAS awkward. He could feel the loss of that easy, comfortable connection that had developed on the flip side of the intense electricity between them. He still felt the spark, but right now it was coming across more like a short circuit.

"Cristina, if you're not comfortable with this..."

"I'm fine. I'm comfortable. Let's go."

He let out a long breath. He knew this feeling. She had shut him down like this before, and he had just stood there, scrub cap in hand, wondering what the hell he did wrong. This was not how he had envisioned this meeting. Maybe those monosyllables yesterday had been about more than just having Meredith in the room.

"Cristina, please... just tell me what's bugging you. Right now, all I can think of is that you don't want to go, or that I'm imposing on you."

"Owen, stop it! I'm here, ok? I want to be here. But I don't want to THINK about it or TALK about it, I just want to DO it. So can we just go, please?"

Something was definitely up with her, but he knew better than to push. One thing he had learned well in the past few months was that Cristina Yang did not like to be pushed. She'd tell him if and when she was ready, and not a second before. He started the engine.

"You ok with seafood? I know this place by the water."

"Yes. Great. That's fine."

Owen pulled away from the curb, wondering if he would have been better off spending the day by himself.

------

_Bad idea. This was a bad idea._

They rode in frosty silence, except for a few lame pleasantries that were forgotten as soon as they were uttered. Owen couldn't recall a more uncomfortable car ride, and that included a frenzied sprint or two across the desert under enemy fire. At least then, everyone in the Humvee had been on the same team. His heart sank further with every mile they covered. Cristina seemed very preoccupied and all he could imagine was that she had truly had enough of him and his problems. When they arrived at the restaurant, she scrambled out of the cab so fast he didn't have time to come around and open her door. He couldn't help but wonder if she was trying to make a point.

They were early enough to get a nice table right next to the big picture window that overlooked the water. The sky was its usual steely gray, but little glints of sunshine poked through the clouds on occasion, causing the water to sparkle with a million little diamonds. Sea birds wheeled overhead and occasionally made a spectacular dive after a fish, an antic he never tired of watching. He loved this place and had been thinking of bringing her here for weeks, before everything had changed. Now, the sick feeling in his gut had him wondering if it hadn't been a mistake. If this went as badly as it seemed to be going, he doubted he would ever want to come here again.

After placing their orders and receiving their drinks, Owen decided to take his cue from the birds outside and dive right in. At this point, he had nothing to lose. He sat in silence until she looked up and he was sure he had her full attention.

"I saw my mother yesterday."

He could tell the instant the surprise registered. _Gotcha,_ he thought with some satisfaction. Cristina's mouth dropped partway open and her whole face transformed. He noticed the interplay of emotion in her expressive eyes, and watched her mouth soften from hard annoyance to something much more accessible. He leaned forward on his crossed arms and waited. Now that the bombshell had been dropped, he decided to let the silence hang there until she said something.

"Oh, god. I'm sorry. I'm such a bitch."

"What?"

"I had no idea why you wanted to see me, and I'm so caught up in my own little drama..."

Just then the bread basket arrived, and Owen nodded his thanks to the waitress, loathe to interrupt Cristina now that she was finally saying something he wanted to hear.

"And what little drama is that?" he asked.

She took a deep breath. "Let's see... There's the I-just-got-off-the-phone-with-Meredith-for-the-tenth-time-and-she-seems-to-really-hate-you-now drama, and the Izzie-is-probably-dying-and-I-realize-I-actually-do-care drama, and... then of course there's the I-miss-you-like-crazy-and-I-still-can't-believe-this-is-so-fucked-up drama..."

He breathed a sigh of relief at that last one. "That's a lot of drama," he nodded. And he realized he had done it again - jumped to a negative conclusion without any solid evidence. Granted, Cristina in a funk was capable of making anyone supremely uncomfortable, but that was only half the equation. He was the one who went down the dark alley all by himself. He was going to have to cut that out.

"It is, but it feels like nothing compared with you going to see your mom. I'm such an idiot. I should have known you'd have a really good reason for asking me to meet you."

He reached across the table and placed his hand on hers. "It's far from nothing. And you're not an idiot. Today shouldn't just be about me."

She returned his gaze and suddenly the connection was back, that thing they had that she didn't have words for. She had been feeling so disoriented this morning - for the past few days in fact - like a TV set that's between channels and displays a snowstorm of static instead of a picture. Now they were both tuned in. The signal was clear again, and she could tell he felt it too.

"Can we start this whole thing over?" she asked.

Owen sat back in his chair. "I'd have to be a fool to say no to that one."

"Ok, then. Tell me all about your visit with your mother."

-----------

Cristina let Owen talk, barely interrupting him at all as he told her about his day with his mom. He got a little choked up as he described some of their interactions, and Cristina found herself wanting to go around to his side of the table and give him a hug, but she refrained. Sitting and talking with him like this fed a part of her that had been slowly starving since she'd broken up with him. It made her wonder about the status of their relationship and exactly how much separation was the right amount. She did not want to lose him for good.

When he was done, Cristina shook her head as if something still didn't compute for her. "I can't believe she knew all this time, and she didn't come after you. My mother would've been all over me like slime." Owen cocked an eyebrow at her strange choice of words. They had never discussed her mother before, and maybe this was why. His curiosity was piqued, but he opted not to follow up on it.

"I know. Me either."

"You must be so relieved."

"You have no idea." He shook his head. "I didn't realize how big of a burden it was until it went away."

"I still don't understand why you decided to go over there all of a sudden. You were so dead set against it before."

Owen chuckled. "It was fear." She looked puzzled, and he continued. "I'm seeing the shrink tomorrow and I didn't want to have to confess that I hadn't told my mom I was back yet. I had enough trouble dealing with your reaction when you found out."

A slow smile lit Cristina's lips. "You're a jerk, you know that?"

He gave her a sheepish grin. "I do now."

"So what happens next?"

"Well, there's more than just the thing with my mom. I did a sleep study on Thursday night. I think we got to the bottom of what happened when..." He had trouble getting the words out, "When I ..."

She was sitting forward now, her elbow on the table, her chin resting on her hand. "You don't have to say it. Just go on."

"It was a very interesting experience, to say the least. I don't want to go into detail right now, but the bottom line is there's a medication that's likely to help and I've started taking it."

"Good. That's good, right?"

"It could be. We have to wait and see if it works, but from what Davies said, it helps most people. The part I can't get my mind around is that I just don't know how I can ever be totally sure that what happened will never happen again... even if it seems to stop the episodes... I mean, I would need to be absolutely positive before we..." He shook his head and cut himself off in mid-sentence. "Oh, god, I'm sorry. I'm assuming things I have no right to assume. Forget I said that."

Cristina looked amused, not offended. "What if I don't want to forget it?"

Owen stopped and just looked at her, searching her eyes for whatever meaning she had intended with that statement. She returned the gaze with a provocative quirk of her brow.

"I'm surprised you're not paying more attention to what Meredith is telling you. I hear she's your _person_."

"Ugh, all she is at the moment is a flaming pain in my ass... But she has me over a barrel because I can't be mad at her now since she's planning her wedding and she needs me... It's like I'm a hostage to this wedding thing - cakes, dresses, flowers, Maid of Honor shit... all mixed up with her trying to convince me to stay away from you. What kind of friend would I be if we got into a fight now, right?" She shook her head with exasperation, "Anyway, look... when you picked me up, I was on the phone with her _again, _and she was all over me about you_ again_. I'm sorry if I took that out on you... What the hell did you say to her, Owen?"

"Not much. I just asked her to mind her own business."

"That's it? Because she made it sound like you were half way to the nut house."

"Well, I did try to explain some things, but she doesn't listen too well. She just kept saying I should stay away from you, period. I got tired of hearing it after the 3rd or 4th time."

Cristina sighed. "I know how you feel. She's kind of relentless that way. What I don't get, though, is why she's so fucking adamant about it. She liked you pretty well before this happened."

Owen had been wondering the same thing, and on reflection he understood it better than he wanted to. "She's protecting you, which I get. I hurt you - could've killed you even - and she doesn't trust me not to do it again. She hardly knows me, so why should she trust me? I can understand that, even if I don't like it, even if I know she's dead wrong about me putting you at risk again... I mean, if someone else had done this to you, I might be pretty bull-headed about it too... But I also think she doesn't like people telling her to butt out, or calling her on her bullshit."

"Did you?"

"Did I what?"

"Call her on her bullshit."

"I guess you could say that. I called her a hypocrite for being so cruel to you during that girl fight you two had, then turning around and acting all high-and-mighty about this. It's that whole "people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" thing that really irritates me. I mean, if she'd at least conceded that she wasn't Snow White, maybe we could have had a reasonable conversation..."

Cristina nodded. "Well, this clarifies things a little. Last time I really called her on something, we got into that fight you just talked about. In the end, I had to be the one to go to her. It only ended when she needed me so badly she couldn't deny it, with that awful serial killer thing...and even then Derek had to intervene and bring her over. It's hard for her to admit being wrong about anything."

Owen looked a little embarrassed, "Oh yeah, that..."

"Oh yeah, what? What did you say to her?"

"Well, I kind of called her on that one, too."

A mischievous grin lit Cristina's face. She remembered how mad she had been at Mer for bonding with that creep. "You didn't."

"Yeah, I kind of did."

"Ok, so now it really really makes sense. This is going to be tougher than I thought."

"Are you saying it's going to be up to me to end this stand off?"

"Eventually, it probably will. But don't worry about it right now. Give her some time to see you make progress. She might come around on her own, especially if Derek talks to her... She's a good friend, Owen. I know she might seem like more trouble than she's worth, but she's worth it to me, even when I kind of hate her like I do now."

"Well, I don't mind putting off another conversation. I don't have the bandwidth to deal with her now, anyway..." He changed the subject abruptly, asking a question that had been nagging at him since their last conversation. "How are you sleeping, Cristina?"

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he had a disconcerting flash of deja vu. It took him a second to realize he was remembering those same words coming at him unexpectedly from Derek's mom. She had caught him off guard with her question, forcing him to look at things he had not been prepared to face at the time. That had led to the drinking binge that had culminated in their disastrous first date. When he looked at the timeline of their relationship from this perspective, it seemed like an endless string of examples of him fucking up and her forgiving him, with the damage to Cristina increasing with each episode. Why was she still here, sitting across the table from him, being less than the girlfriend he knew he couldn't have right now, but more than the kick in the ass he deserved? He knew this train of thought led down a very dark rabbit hole, but it was hard not to peek inside.

Cristina snapped her fingers in front of his face. "Hello? Do you usually ask questions and then not bother to stick around for the answer?"

"I'm sorry. I was... never mind. Would you mind repeating what you said?"

"I said I'm sleeping ok, thank you. I haven't had another nightmare, if that's what you're wondering."

"It is. Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure. I'm fine, Owen."

"Ok." He had heard that line one too many times from her. _Not ok, _he told himself, _but not a fight I want to have right now_. He kept to himself the observation that, although he still found her breathtakingly beautiful, she was looking a little frayed around the edges.

And she kept to herself the fact that, even though she was not having nightmares... every night at precisely 3am her eyes would pop open and she would stare at the ceiling - sometimes for minutes, sometimes for hours - until she fell back into an exhausted and restless sleep.

------

On the ride back, it struck Owen that this little rendezvous was a first. "You know, we've never done this before."

"Done what?"

"Gone out for a meal. We don't even eat together at work. You're always hanging out with your friends in the cafeteria, and I've never taken you out before."

"And...?"

"And I know we're not together now, so it's kind of strange to finally take you out somewhere under these circumstances. I didn't really think about it when I asked you. I just wanted to talk to you someplace away from work and your apartment."

"Hmmm..." she looked thoughtful, "Define _not together now._"

Owen was grateful to be having this conversation in the car, where they could both look out the windshield instead of at each other. It was such a touchy subject that he wasn't sure if he'd be able to handle looking in her eyes while talking about it. "I don't know if I can define it. We broke up, right? First I tried to break up with you, but you wouldn't let me, and then you broke up with me. Which was the right thing to do. I need to get my shit sorted out. I get that. So we're... not together."

"Ok, so if we're not together, then what ARE we?" She was clearly wrestling with this definition for some reason.

"I guess that depends on where you want to go from here... eventually. You have to know I'm hoping this situation is temporary, even if I don't know how long it'll last. I have a lot more hope that I _will_ get through this than I had a few days ago... And I wish I was unselfish enough to say that I don't want to ask you to wait around, but I'm not a good liar. There's no way I can watch you with someone else and keep my sanity... I guess we should probably figure out if we're on the same wavelength here, because if we're not I don't think I can handle staying here long term."

They rode in silence for a few minutes, and then Cristina finally spoke. "I've done a lot of thinking since... that night. I was ready to stay with you after what happened. I thought I could do it. If I could have, I would have, and it would have been a bad decision. Now I realize that by telling you it was ok for as long as I did, I enabled you to continue putting off your own healing process. It was a dance we did, Owen, and I take responsibility for my part in it."

"Cristina, this isn't your fault..."

"No, it's not, but I still had a hand in it. If I had been smart enough to break up with you sooner and insist you get help, we might have avoided the rest of it. I can't be sorry for what happened because I don't waste time on stuff like that. It's done. But I can learn from my mistakes and not make the same ones again." She let her words sink in and then continued, "Do you think if we got back together right now, you'd still follow through on all the stuff you have planned... the sleep clinic, the medication, the shrink...?"

"That's an easy question. Yes. I know I would, but as much as I miss you, I don't think we _should_ be back together just yet."

"I don't either. It's too soon. We both need to take a step back, and you have a lot of work to do. Maybe I have some too. I realize I put myself at risk with you, and I was too caught up in the feelings to heed the warning signals. That's one place where Mer is right in all this. She knows this about me and she's worried I'll do it again. What she doesn't understand is that I won't. I want you back in my life, Owen, but not until it's safe."

He nodded in agreement. "Then we're on the same page. I just wish we could convince your 'person' of this so she'd back off. I don't like you having to take shit from her, and I can barely stand to work with her myself right now."

"Let me work on that part. I think if I lay it out for her, she'll get it. She doesn't understand our relationship, and I guess that's because I didn't confide in her much while it was going on."

"I have no problem with you handling it. Just let me know when it's safe to approach again, and I'll give her another shot... but that still doesn't answer your original question... about what we are if we're not together."

Cristina thought for a moment. "I think we're... on a break. That's it. We're on a break." She seemed pleased to have pinpointed a term. "Does that work for you?"

Owen relaxed another notch. _On a break _had the connotations of it being a recess, a temporary condition with an as yet undetermined restart date. That worked. That worked just fine.

"Yes. That works for me. Can I see you once in a while and keep you in the loop on things?"

She turned in her seat and gave him one of those half smiles he loved so much. "I'm counting on it."

-------


	17. Chapter 17

_**A/N: These next few chapters have been very challenging to write. To be clear to everyone, I am not a therapist. I don't claim to know how to treat PTSD. This story is for entertainment purposes only. **_

--------------------

He had let down his guard. He could see that now. After a string of successes with the sleep clinic, his mother, and then Cristina, he had gotten just a little bit complacent. Now, sitting here with Dr. Wyatt, unsure of himself, his skin crawling with anxiety, he realized that he had been a fool to think that any of this was going to be easier than he'd originally feared. In fact, he was pretty fucking sure it was going to be harder, much harder, than anything he'd conjured up in his own head. His hands gripped the arms of the chair so hard his knuckles turned white, while his mind raced in frantic circles. The urge to get up and walk out was very strong.

Finally, she spoke. "This is uncomfortable for you."

_Great powers of observation you have there, Dr. Wyatt._ "Extremely."

"Have you ever seen a therapist before?"

"No."

She just looked at him, as if waiting for him to speak, and he had no idea what to say. He had never been good at small talk in social situations, preferring a deep conversation over inane pleasantries when given the choice. It was even harder to know what to do in a place like this, where he was on someone else's turf and he didn't know the rules. He shifted in his chair. Random observations struck him as he searched his brain for something, anything that might be appropriate. He noticed that she was indeed a redhead as Derek had described, and realized with dismay that she reminded him of his Aunt Claire, his mother's sister, a rather severe woman who talked over people as if her opinion was the only one that mattered. He wondered if he could get past the resemblance or if he'd have to switch therapists. The second option was beginning to look pretty good right about now.

The long pauses were frustrating him. _Is this some kind of test?_ "Am I supposed to be talking? Because I don't know what to say. I don't know how this works."

"How about you start with what brought you here."

"Ok, um... I heard about you from Derek Shepherd..."

She smiled. "How is Derek?"

_How is Derek? What kind of question is that? _Owen knew Meredith had seen her professionally, but that Wyatt's code of ethics prohibited her from mentioning she even knew her. He considered giving her more information than she'd asked for, satisfying her little fishing expedition with a tidbit on both of them. Perhaps this would be perceived as a peace offering and she would go easy on him. "He's fine. He just got engaged to Meredith Grey."

"Oh, that's nice. I'm happy for him." He was pleased to notice that neither her voice nor her facial expression betrayed anything about her relationship with Meredith. At least he could count on her discretion. That added a level of safety and put one check mark in the plus column of the chart he was already compiling in his head. At the top of that column it said, "Stay put" and at the top of the other, "Bolt for the door."

"So you heard about me from Derek..." she prodded.

"Yes. He... I... believe I have PTSD."

"And what leads you to believe that?"

It came out in a rush of words. "I'm a veteran. I served in Iraq, 4 tours as a trauma surgeon. My entire unit was killed in an ambush on my last tour. I was the only survivor..."

She didn't seem fazed. "Anything else?"

"Well, I had a night terror and strangled my...my girlfriend in her sleep," he continued as quickly as he could. _Just say it. Then you'll be done. _"She's ok, but it scared us both really badly and broke us up. I've been to the sleep clinic already, and started medication. You can get the records of the sleep study if you want to see them."

She jotted down a note on a Post It and waited for him to continue. When he didn't, she asked, "Any other consults or test results I should know about?"

"An MRI. You can ask Shepherd about it."

She wrote it down. "I'll need you to sign some release forms on your way out." Owen nodded. _On your way out_ gave him something to look forward to.

The silence stretched out again, seemingly for hours, though Owen knew it couldn't be more than a few minutes._ Why doesn't she ask me a question, already?_ He missed the long, comfortable silences he used to share with Cristina, just sitting together and not needing to say anything. These pauses, though, were laden with unasked questions that he was simultaneously impatient to get out of the way and afraid to hear.

Finally she broke the silence herself. "How does it feel for you to talk about these things - your unit being killed? Strangling your girlfriend?"

Owen let out a choked laugh, glancing at her quickly and then away. He stared over her shoulder, at the far wall, which he noticed was a different color than the rest of the room. "Oh, I'm not _talking_ about them. Listing them for you is not the same as talking about them."

She looked at him intently. "And what would happen if you talked about them?"

_This was it, the million dollar question._ It was what he'd been afraid of all along, that crushing sense of hopelessness and despair that enveloped him whenever he allowed his mind to wander into this loaded terrain. Somehow, without even knowing him, she had managed to stick a knife in his heart in less than 10 minutes. He had to admire that. He registered an almost detached surprise as his emotional reaction began to build. What _would_ happen if he talked about them? He had never tried, except for that one time when he'd first gotten back and found himself explaining to Cristina what had happened to him in Iraq, and that other time in Cristina's shower that he could barely remember. Both had been something short of _really_ talking about them, the first one supplying only the most general details, the second lubricated with so much alcohol he didn't count it as a conscious act. As he tried to answer the question now, the words stuck in his throat and no sound came out. He felt very vulnerable, as if his position had just been exposed to enemy fire and things were exploding all around him.

_Bolt for the door, Owen. Just get up and go. You don't have to do this._ His hands moved from their death grip on the armrests to cover his face, and he blinked hard to stem the flood of tears that shimmered in the background, tears he had been holding back for what seemed an eternity. He tried to collect himself, forcing himself to stay put in spite of the urge to run. It would do no good to fall apart now; besides, he had committed to Cristina that he would follow through with therapy. Like it or not, he had to be here.

The question repeated itself in his head with a sinister echo: _And what would happen if you talked about them?_

He lifted his head and looked at her with stricken eyes, and the words came out in an anxious whisper. "I don't _know_."

---------

About half way through the session, Owen realized that Dr. Wyatt was equal if not superior to some of the better surgeons he'd had the privilege of working with over the years. Armed only with words and what must be some kind of x-ray vision, she had managed to uncover every hot button he had, delicately probing with a light touch to ascertain the depth of the injury and then letting go. By the time she was done with him, he felt like a huge bundle of exposed nerve endings, and he had a greater understanding of the nuanced skill it took to do this type of work. Like a surgeon, she went in and uncovered the injured parts, but unlike a surgeon, she closed him back up without fixing any of them, leaving him to stew on his own until their next session. "Today was just exploratory," she explained. "When our work gets more focused, you should get some kind of closure by the end of each session. We've stirred the pot a bit today, and we didn't really put the lid back on, but I don't want you to worry about that. I did it on purpose. Things will probably bubble up for you before you see me next, so I want you to pick up a notebook or journal for yourself on the way home and keep it nearby at all times. Bring it with you when you come."

"Why?"

"Because what happens between our meetings is just as important as what happens during them... You'll do a lot of this work on your own, not because you want to, but because you won't be able to help it. Things will come out in your dreams, or you'll realize something important during the day. Write them down. We'll talk about them in here."

It was then that Owen realized that he was definitely coming back to see her. He had been holding off on that decision, waiting to see how things progressed. During these last ten minutes he had begun to trust her enough to decide that continuing with her would be easier and more productive than finding someone else. She was smart, capable, and very direct - all qualities he could appreciate. Something about her tough exterior made him feel safe, as if she had already seen and done it all, and nothing he could bring here would scare her off. He was objective enough to understand that the fact that he found therapy to be a miserable experience was not her fault. He doubted it would be any more palatable with anyone else. Besides, they had covered a lot of ground during this session, and he was loathe to have to go through the preliminaries again with another therapist.

As their time drew to a close, she moved away from the more emotional material they had been working on and asked him about his goals. He considered for a moment before replying. "I just want to go back to feeling like myself again. Right now things are... out of control. I mean, I can work, but that's the only thing that feels somewhat normal. The sleep terrors...I have to make those stop. And the jumpiness... those times I just freeze up... all that needs to stop. I realize I'll never be the same as I was before... before all this happened, but I'd at least like to recognize the guy I see in the mirror again."

She nodded. "Anything else?"

"Yeah," his laugh was bitter, "I want my girlfriend back."

Her reaction could have been condescending, and he was grateful that it wasn't. "I'm sure you realize that's up to her. I can work with you to fix your issues, but her decisions are hers. I don't want you going into this with unrealistic expectations."

"Believe me, I know. Nobody tells Cristina Yang what to do."

Wyatt gave him a quick look that he couldn't interpret but said nothing. _She knows her,_ Owen thought, and realized he'd never told Cristina the name of the therapist he was seeing. He hoped he got the chance to find out if there was an interesting story here.

"Um... would you mind telling me what to expect next time? I'm not so good with surprises these days."

Wyatt nodded. "No problem. One of the best ways I can describe it is to compare it to mucking through a swamp. You've known the swamp was there for a while, known it contained dark and dangerous things under the surface, but you've been too afraid to get near it. Unfortunately, when you leave those swamp creatures alone, they venture out of their own accord and attack you when you least expect it. And that's where you are right now - the night terrors, the jumpiness, the freezing, probably some flashbacks too... It's a very frightening place to be, because it's totally reactive. You just wait anxiously for something to happen and then scramble to adjust. And the anxiety _about_ something happening gets to be as bad as the anxiety _when_ it happens... Have I got it right so far?"

R_emarkably right, _he thought. She _was_ good_._ "Yeah, you do."

"So, Dr. Hunt, we have to drain the swamp, and then take a good look at what's been hiding under the surface."

He found himself breaking into a cold sweat at those words. He already had a pretty good idea what was lurking down there, and it wasn't anything he wanted to see. "That sounds really, really awful."

She smiled. "I'm sure when you describe a surgery to people you're about to operate on, they have the same reaction."

Owen couldn't help but chuckle at that comparison. "Maybe that's why I like trauma so much. Plenty of emergencies where we just head straight for the OR. Cuts out a lot of difficult conversation."

She nodded. "Even so, you and I, we're not so different. We both slice people open, only with therapy I don't have the luxury of calling in an anesthesiologist to put you out for the painful parts. I wish I could, but unfortunately you need to participate for this to be effective..."

_Surgery without anesthesia. That sounded about right._

"... but as you work through the issues," she continued, "it does get easier. You'll start to make progress, and that will give you more incentive to deal with what comes up. I won't kid you. It's a painful and often tedious process. You're likely to feel worse before you feel better. You should adjust your expectations accordingly."

"Terrific."

She gave him a small smile. She could tell already that she was going to enjoy working with him. "One more thing... I'd like you to consider joining one of the support groups over at the VA. Being with other veterans who've had similar experiences has been shown to be very helpful for people in your situation."

_Oh, shit. No more. Please._ "Yeah...uh...I don't know if I'm ready for that right now. Can I think about it?"

"That's fine. We'll talk about it again another time. As for our schedule, I recommend 3 times a week to start with. Can you handle that, Dr. Hunt?"

"I suppose..."

"Good. Make some appointments with my receptionist on your way out... and sign those release forms for the MRI and the sleep study."

Owen nodded and stood up. That was it, then. He was officially in therapy. "I think you should probably start calling me Owen... Dr Hunt sounds awkward since I'm actually the patient."

She got up and walked him to the door. "Ok... Owen. I'll see you in a couple of days."


	18. Chapter 18

**_A/N: See below for author's note regarding the conclusion of this story._**

----------------------

Two days later, Owen was back in Dr. Wyatt's office, an empty journal in his hands. Plenty of thoughts had swirled around in his head in the interim, but nothing coherent enough to write down. She reassured him that this was not a performance, that the journal was for him to use as he saw fit, then invited him to make himself comfortable on the couch, either sitting up or lying down. He opted for sitting up. Lying down on a couch in a shrink's office was just too much of a cliché.

"There's a technique I'd like to try with you. We'll see how it works out. It's called guided visualization." She paused to see if he was going to ask what that was, then continued when he just sat there. "It's not hypnosis, in case you're wondering. It's a technique that allows us to work more closely with the subconscious by visualizing and experiencing things in your head, and I think in your case this will help us to move forward more quickly. Some of what we do in the visualization may seem a little strange, so I want you to be prepared."

"Like what?" he asked.

"We'll be dealing symbolically with some of the material. You'll see once we start."

_Dealing symbolically...What is this, a literature class? _Owen looked askance at her, as if she was the one who needed therapy. He was too much of a doctor's doctor to have a lot of patience for any healing modality that wasn't firmly rooted in science. Working in a hospital-based practice, Dr. Wyatt knew that look; she had dealt with more than her share of doctors. "I realize this is all foreign to you, so I'm asking you to bear with me and just give it a try. You have a lot of walls up around your feelings, and I need you to get into a more receptive state so we can start to uncover some of what's going on. The stress and anxiety you're experiencing currently will get in the way if we simply launch in and try to talk it out. So sit back, try to relax, and just do what I tell you, ok?"

Owen looked at her skeptically, but realized he had already made the decision to trust her last time. "Ok."

"Close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths." Owen tried to settle in and do what she asked, but he still felt kind of awkward. "Now... imagine yourself in a place that feels very safe to you. It could be out in nature, at the beach, in a forest... somewhere where you know you're safe and you can relax. When you're there, say ok."

Owen closed his eyes and allowed his mind to drift. He found himself in his mom's backyard, sitting back in one of the old Adirondack chairs, looking out into the wooded area behind the house.

"Ok."

"This is a place you can come back to any time you need to. It's safe. No harm can come to you here. Ok?"

"Ok." _Whatever._

"Now, in your mind's eye, I want you to get up from wherever you are and start walking. You're leaving your safe space, searching for that swamp we talked about last time. It might be close by, and it might be very far away. Whatever distances you need to travel to get there, do that. Even very long distances will only take a moment. Let me know when you're standing by the swamp."

Owen pictured himself getting up from the chair, cutting across the yard, through the woods, and then fast-forwarding across land, sea and finally the sand pit of the Iraqi desert to reach an enormous mucky lake of black, putrid water. He had not wanted to come here, not expected when he closed his eyes for this 'visualization' to go anywhere near Iraq. His heart rate started to climb as he assessed his surroundings. Horrible odors emanated from the swamp, and the surface trembled with slimy bubbles. Ooze sloshed menacingly onto the banks in little waves that nearly touched his shoes, and he took a step back, heart pounding. He noticed that the fear he felt was real, even though he knew in his mind that the swamp wasn't.

"Ok."

"Look around. There's a rope coming out of the swamp. It's within easy reach of your hand. I want you to bend over and take hold of it."

"Ok."

"This rope is attached to a huge drain plug, like a bigger version of the kind you find in old fashioned sinks. Once you pull this plug, all the swamp water will drain out and you'll be able to see what's in there. Now listen carefully, because only you can decide when you're ready to pull that plug. It must be done with intention. Feel the rope in your hands. Feel the weight of the plug at the other end...."

She was watching him and could see that he was holding his breath. "Keep breathing, Owen... Good. Now, when the time is right, I want you to pull out the plug."

Owen stared at the surface of the swamp. The rope felt clammy in his hands, and his heart was beginning to race erratically. _What makes her think I'm stupid enough to pull this thing out?_ At least here, standing on the bank, he was safe. He could stand here forever if he wanted to. His life could go on as before. It wasn't _that_ bad.

Dr. Wyatt's voice had receded into the distance, and he stood there for what seemed to him like hours, contemplating his decision. The tendency toward inertia was strong, in spite of all that had occurred recently. True, his current existence was no way to live, but at least he knew what to expect. It wasn't until he looked beyond the edge of the swamp to the other side and saw Cristina standing there staring at him, arms folded, that he knew he had to act. He had made her a promise, even if he hadn't made one to himself just yet. He gave the rope a tug, but the plug was jammed in firmly and his first effort was not enough to dislodge it. He pulled again, and felt it budge just a little. Finally he wrapped the rope around his waist and tied it in a knot, then braced himself and used all of his body weight. This time he was successful, and the lack of resistance when the plug popped out threw him backward so suddenly that he almost lost his balance. He heard a sucking sound, and the fetid water began to recede with a loud gurgle.

Owen had been so fixated on accomplishing the mission that his success caught him by surprise, and he stared in horrified silence as he realized what he had done. His heart was pounding so hard it felt like it would leap out of his chest, and his breath became labored and ragged. This was wrong. He couldn't do this. He didn't _need_ to do this to deal with what was really bothering him right now, which was all about what he had done to Cristina and how he was going to get her back. The rest of it was unimportant in comparison. Iraq was a distraction, a red herring. If he worked on what had happened right here in Seattle, got Cristina back, all the rest would fall into place. His frantic mind wondered for a moment if there was any possible way to rush in there and jam the plug back in the hole. He looked back across the swamp for direction, but Cristina had vanished. He was all alone, watching the water level go inexorably down, seeing shapes start to emerge from the muck - twisted human shapes, distorted and bloated, some piled on top of each other, some in pieces, others thrown to the sides in impossible positions.

This was wrong. This was all wrong. He didn't need to be here, didn't need to see this. He couldn't look, and at the same time he had to. Like passing a car wreck on the freeway, there was no turning away. His eyes were drawn to the carnage even though his mind told him to look elsewhere. He stared, and a slap of recognition made him shut his eyes more tightly to block out the images. He felt the acid sting of nausea rising into his throat, and opened his eyes. "Oh, god, I'm gonna be sick."

Dr. Wyatt calmly passed him an empty trash can, and waited silently while Owen puked his guts out.

------------

Owen rinsed out his mouth and washed his face in the sink in Wyatt's office, then sat back down and eyed her warily. He had trusted her, and now he felt like he had been blindsided. She should have warned him this might happen, although he also knew that if she'd told him, he probably wouldn't have stuck around long enough to find out for sure. He was deeply rattled. The intensity of his physical reaction to the mental process he had been going through had certainly gotten his attention and given him some healthy respect for the power of visualization. He tried to shake off the embarrassment he was feeling over losing his lunch in her trash basket. "Was that... supposed to happen?" he asked.

"There's no 'supposed to' with this, but yes, it happens sometimes. It's not a bad thing, though I know it feels pretty bad right now." Her matter-of-factness helped to normalize it a little. " Now, tell me what you saw."

Throwing up had left him a chalky shade of white, and Owen blanched even more at the question. It was hard to get the words out, but finally he managed. "Bodies... lots of...bodies..."

"Did you recognize them?"

He nodded without saying anything. Tears were threatening to spill out and he blinked them back.

"Tell me who you saw."

"I saw Cristina."

"Was she one of the bodies?"

"No, she was... standing on the other side, watching me."

"Is that what made you throw up?"

"What? No. That was what made me pull the plug, though. I don't think I would have done it if she hadn't been there."

"And are you doing this for her?"

"Yes... No... Mostly yes."

"You can't be, Owen. You have to want this for yourself, or you won't get where you need to go. I can see you really care about her, but you're not doing her any favors by involving her in this. Based on what you told me, she's probably got her own work to do around what happened. You need to leave her out of it."

"I know. I know that's true, but none of the rest of it matters to me right now."

"I disagree. People don't usually puke over things that don't matter."

A flash of anger lit his face. "How do you know what made me puke? You weren't inside my head."

"No, but you said you saw bodies, and you said it wasn't Cristina. That doesn't leave us with too many options."

She had him there. He just stared at her and said nothing.

"Tell me what you saw. Tell me what made you sick."

He realized he was fighting her too hard. And she was making sense, even if he didn't want to hear what she had to say. He was sitting here already. Might as well answer the question. "I saw... everyone... just everyone. My whole platoon... everyone dead." His voice had dropped till it was almost a whisper.

"And seeing them made you sick?"

"Seeing them that way... they were mangled... blown apart."

"Is that how you saw them last?"

He swallowed hard and nodded without saying anything.

"What were you doing when you saw them like this? I mean in the actual situation, not in the visualization."

Owen heart started to race and his palms began sweating. He shifted in his seat and rubbed his hands back and forth on his thighs. "I can't talk about this. I'm sorry. I need to go now." He got up to leave.

She rose too. "Sit down."

He let out an exasperated breath. "I'm not a child. You can't just order me around."

"No, but I can make a strong suggestion. Sit down. Please."

"Why? What's the point? I'm done here today."

"Because I can't work with you unless you're willing to work with me. Now, either sit down, or walk out and find yourself another therapist. I do a lot of things in here, but chasing my patients down and dragging them back is not one of them. There are plenty of other shrinks out there. I'm sure you can find one who'll put up with this crap if you look hard enough."

He gave her a long look, and finally sat down again.

"I know this is hard, Owen. That's why I'm here to help you with it. But you have to let me. You have to trust me."

His lips were set in a tight line. He nodded but said nothing.

"Why is it so hard for you to talk about what you were doing when the ambush happened?"

After keeping such a tight lid on it for so long, Owen practically exploded when he finally spoke. "Because clearly I was doing NOTHING. Because if I'd been doing SOMETHING I would have saved at least one of them, right? I'm good at what I do. These were my friends! How is it possible that I couldn't save _anyone?_ How is it POSSIBLE that they were all hit so hard they were too far gone to save, and I was barely scratched? How can that be? It makes no sense." He rubbed his hands over his face, as if he were trying to erase what happened. "Pieces of them were all over...everywhere. When the first RPGs exploded, I got hit in the face with someone's hand... just the fucking hand. I don't even know whose it was. Shrapnel was flying everywhere, tearing them apart, and it was like I was bulletproof or something... All I could do was run around and try to revive people who were already dead."

She let him sit with his emotions for a minute before she spoke. "What are you feeling right now, Owen?"

"What do you mean, what am I feeling? If there was anything left in my stomach I'd be throwing up again - THAT'S how I'm feeling. I feel like SHIT. I feel like the most miserable piece of shit that ever walked the earth. I feel like every one of those people deserved to live more than I did. Some of them had kids, families. Why am I still here if they're gone?"

She let his words die out and allowed for a few moments of silence as he sat with what he'd just revealed. "Is it possible you just got lucky? Just happened to be in the right place at the right time? It happens all the time, in airline crashes, car crashes, natural disasters... that lucky person who survives when everyone else dies. People who live through things like that typically feel just like you do. It's called Survivor Guilt."

"How does that help me, to know that? It doesn't change how I feel."

"And yet you still come to work... still save lives every day...What's that about?"

"I don't know. Maybe I'm just on autopilot. It's what I trained for. It's all I know how to do anymore."

"I heard you say you should have been able to save at least one of your buddies. Is that what you do, Owen? Save people?"

He looked at her like she was some kind of moron. "Of course it is. I'm a trauma surgeon."

"That's not what I meant. You weren't born a trauma surgeon. That was a career choice you made. I'm asking you how you define yourself as a person."

He gave a frustrated sigh, "I don't know. I just... do my job."

"This is about how you see yourself, what you think your role is in the world. If saving people is just a job for you, that's one thing. If it's part of your mission in life, it's another."

He thought about it for a minute. "Cristina accused me of having a "Savior Complex," if that tells you anything."

Wyatt gave him a knowing look. "I'd say it tells me a lot."

"So what does it mean?"

"Well, for starters, it means that someone like you will react much more strongly to a failure like the one you had that day than someone who doesn't define themselves that way. It means this incident isn't just about survivor guilt. It's also about your personal failure to uphold one of your core values. It's no surprise you feel like you don't deserve to live, because in your mind, you have to earn that right by saving people."

Owen shook his head. "I find it hard to believe that anyone would walk away from something like that without it really impacting them, whether they had a savior complex or not."

She smiled. "You just made my next point for me. You have to learn how to give yourself a break, Owen. None of this is your fault, even if you insist on taking responsibility for it."

"And this is something you can fix in here?"

"No, this is something we can work together to understand, and when we do, we can find ways for you to live with yourself even when you're not perfect."

"I don't think I ever expected myself to be perfect..."

"No, but in an incident where you were as much of a victim as everyone else, you hold yourself to a standard no reasonable person could possibly fulfill. And my guess is, this isn't the only time it's happened. It's just the most dramatic."

Owen thought back to the homeless man who had gotten mangled in the garbage truck, and how deeply he had been affected by his death. It wasn't just about the way he had related to Tim Miller's story, it was also about a deep sense of personal failure. He had desperately wanted to fix him, to set him back on his feet and give him a life, to show it was possible to come back from such extreme devastation. He, and the rest of the surgical team, had failed. Aside from Callie, who had worked so hard to rebuild his legs, Owen was certain he was the only one who had taken this particular death so much to heart. "Ok, you might be right about that."

"This is good, Owen. Talking about it like this is a first step. It gives us something we can work with. I'm really pleased with how this went today."

"Does that mean we're done?"

"It does. But I want you to really think about what we talked about. My guess is you'll come up with some insights before we see each other again."

"Ok. I'll... I'll see you later." Owen got up and let himself out.

Dr. Wyatt sat quietly for a moment after Owen left, then jotted down a few more notes. She cared about all her patients, but this one had touched her heart today more than most. The idea that someone could sacrifice so much, go through such hell, and then still judge himself so harshly, tapped into a well of compassion that almost compromised her professional detachment. Though he tried to hide it, she could clearly see his pain and vulnerability, locked down and buried under a mountain of self-judgment. Given the way he raked himself over the coals for not helping others enough in impossible circumstances, she could well imagine how severely he must be castigating himself for hurting his girlfriend. This guy deserved a break, but he was unlikely to give himself one without intensive intervention.

That's where she came in. Whatever it took to help this man, she was going to deliver.

**THE END**

--------------------------------

_**A/N:** I had other intentions for this story when I began it, the first of which was to complete it before the 4 week hiatus in the show ended. But the story expanded as I wrote it and became bigger than I'd planned, and I didn't manage to finish it in time. Once the show started up again, I wanted to see where it would go before writing any more of this. Now that the final episodes of Season 5 have aired, I'm finding it too difficult to go back and complete this story without going off canon - something I'm loathe to do. _

_The show ended up delivering the basic plot points that I intended to cover, and they did it well enough that I feel no need to augment what the GA writers have given us. Had I wanted to add to what they did, I would have given you more of the encounter with Owen's mom, which I've already done here. I would also have given you more of Owen's therapy with Dr. Wyatt, and I've already done that too. I do have additional therapy material written already, and I intend to include some of that in other stories. If you're following my work, you'll see it pop up somewhere else under a different title._

_So for those of you who are disappointed that I'm not taking this one further, I feel badly about disappointing you and I hope you know I didn't intend to leave you hanging. Please forgive me for not taking this to a more definitive conclusion. Consider the place where Cristina and Owen are now in the show as the logical conclusion to this story, and keep an eye out for my future work that will hopefully take it a few more steps down the road over the summer._

_Thanks to all of you who have been reading my work, and thanks for all the reviews. It means a lot to me that people enjoy something that I've created. If you've read this story and still haven't left me a comment, it's not too late! I'm always delighted to hear from you.  
_


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